Why now? Part of the reason is because the majority of US troops are out of Iraq, thereby leaving a minimal number of American soldiers available for Iranian retaliation. A related reason could be the loss of prestige to Washington with the withdrawal of those troops. It’s not like Washington won its war in Iraq; it’s more like it was a stalemate with Tehran still holding on to a couple key cards. Israel, with an element of its ruling elites always ready to attack any perceived enemy, is of course a constant element in the drive to destroy Iran, as are the ruling families of certain Arab Gulf states that compete with Tehran in the oil market. Iran’s alleged support for various resistance movements in the Middle East and Asia provides Israel with but one more reason to call for war, especially since those resistance movements are primarily opposed to Israel’s expansionist anti-Palestinian policies.

For those warmongering pundits who haven’t yet quite jumped on the bandwagon for either an Israeli or joint US-Israeli attack comes an article in the January/February 2012 Foreign Affairs, a policy journal written by and for the US elites. The piece, written by Council of Foreign Relations member and Georgetown professor Matthew Kroenig, is titled “Time to Attack Iran.” While the title of the article leaves nothing to the imagination, Kroenig’s long-winded piece utilizes an almost Jesuitical argument as to why the United States should attack Iran now.

Briefly put, the argument goes like this. Since it is clear that Iran is intent on developing nuclear weapons and Israel is intent on preventing that, it would be best if the United States military launched a limited attack on Iran’s nuclear-related facilities before Israel does and starts a war with much greater consequences. After all, continues Kroenig, Washington’s forces are sophisticated enough to limit civilian casualties and take out the necessary targets. Furthermore, any retaliation would be limited, suggests Kroenig, because most of what Tehran says regarding retaliation is bluster. If some US troops die, that risk is worth it. After all, for men like Kroenig a nuclear Iran is too great of a threat to US national security, human lives be damned.

Let me briefly address this piece of idiocy. First, Kroenig does not provide any proof for his supposition that Iran is intent on developing nuclear weapons. Instead, he accepts the common presentation of IAEA reports made in the Western press, a presentation that has been shown time and time again to be a misrepresentation of the facts in those reports. Naturally, that misrepresentation suggests that Iran is ready to go live at any time with a nuclear weapon and wants to do so. Second, Kroenig easily dismisses the possibility of Iranian retaliation. From the comfort of his office at Georgetown University he makes the statement that Washington could tell Iran certain acts would be subject to massive retaliation, while others like “token missile strikes against U.S. bases and ships in the region” would be acceptable. It’s as if Mr. Kroenig was talking about a game of World of Warcraft instead of an action that might start World War Three.

It is not time to attack Iran. It is time to back away from the insanity expressed in the recent GOP debates about the need to attack Iran. It is also time to end the nonsense put forth by men and women like Mr. Kroenig. Their use of neutral and technical language to demand an attack on Iran or any other nation is more reprehensible than the demagoguery of Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich. When I read the ramblings of technocrats like Mr. Kroenig, I can not help but be reminded of Adolf Eichmann and his office as they sent memos back and forth discussing the destruction of the European Jews. The language those men used was bureaucratic and neutral. The results were anything but.

Washington does not like the government in Tehran. The reasons for this are many, but the primary one is simple. Tehran opposes Washington’s designs for the region. It also opposes Tel Aviv’s. Washington aligns itself with Tel Aviv no matter what it does. Until Washington alters its “special relationship” with Tel Aviv so that other interests in the region are considered in a fair manner, Iran’s presence will always be a threat to Washington’s interests. As has been written many times over, Tehran has good reason not to trust the words and motivations of the United States. The last sixty years of history between the two nations is one that includes a CIA coup against a popular government; years of support to an autocratic and despotic regime whose secret police tortured and killed unknown numbers of opposition members; a secret deal between some of the most reactionary elements of the post-1979 Iranian revolutionary government and the Reagan administration that helped destroy the democratic socialist and secular elements of the revolution; and a series of attacks on Iranian ships, civilian aircraft and, most recently, its scientists.

Once again, it is not time to attack Iran. Opposing war and sanctions on that country is not equivalent to supporting the Tehran government. However, it does mean demanding that Washington to stop edging towards war on Iran, end the sanctions and do everything in its power (including suspending ALL aid and loans to Tel Aviv) to prevent Israel from launching an attack. If nuclear weapons really are the issue, then it would seem that it is time for all parties in the Mideast to begin unconditional talks establishing a nuclear free zone. It is certainly not the time to begin a war that will only convince more nations that nuclear arms are the only way they can ensure their continued existence. We must step back from the precipice.

Engels will compare his and Marx’s “bastard” progeny with the “legitimate” progeny of Herr Dühring with respect to economic production in this chapter. Dühring rejects any notion of the capitalist production system which claims that economic crises are due to the very nature of the structure of capitalism itself. That is a Marxian fantasy.

For Dühring, Engels says, “crises are only occasional deviations from ‘normalcy’ and at most only serve to promote ‘the development of a more regulated order.’” The Marxists maintain, au contraire, that crises are caused by over-production and this is a structural fault within the capitalist system itself. But Dühring rejects this and writes that the real reason for crises is, in his words, “the lagging behind of popular consumption … artificially produced under-consumption … with the natural growth of the NEEDS OF THE PEOPLE (!), which ultimately make the gulf between supply and demand so critically wide.”

To this Engels replies that the masses have been forced to under-consume throughout history and in every economic system based on class exploitation, therefore under-consumption is not some artificially produced phenomenon but something all class societies share — i.e., that the exploited class never has the value of its yearly production returned to it at the end of the year. The crises of industrial capitalism, however, only date from the the first quarter of the nineteenth century.

Thus, Engels concludes, it is under capitalism that periodic economic crises come into the world and while under-consumption of the masses is a PREREQUISITE it is not the CAUSE of crises. And knowing this, he says, “tells us just as little why crises exist today as why they did not exist before.”

Dühring, in fact, does not think mass markets are all that important anyway. He himself says that capitalist production happens to “depend for its market mainly on THE CIRCLES OF THE POSSESSING CLASSES THEMSELVES.” His confusion becomes only more apparent when he follows up on this by claiming that the most important industries (this is the 1870s remember) are cotton and iron production. But, Engels points out, the production of these two is entirely dependent on a mass market and the possessing class make up only an “infinitesimally small degree” of its market.

Engels then points out that capitalism, by it very need to grow and expand, brings about crises. He says, for example, in England there is just one small town (Oldham) that from 1872 to 1875 doubled its production of spun cotton [the number of its spindles went from 2.5 to 5 million] and this is just one of a dozen small towns around Manchester. Oldham, by the way, produced as much spun cotton as ALL of Germany (including Alsace). This was happening in towns all over Great Britain.

It thus shows “deep-rooted effrontery” on the part of Herr Dühring to blame the English masses for under-consumption rather than the capitalists for over-production when it comes to “the present complete stagnation in the yarn and cloth markets.”²

Engels ends his critique of Herr Dühring’s views on crises but gives a few quotes that demonstrate that Dühring has no idea about capitalism as an economic system but sees everything in terms of the behavior of individuals. If over-speculation and the unplanned building of private factories are responsible for crises we must see that as simply “the ordinary interplay of overstrain and relaxation” of the system and look closely at “the rashness of individual entrepreneurs and the lack of private circumspection” as one of the causes.

The only “rashness” here, Engels maintains, is the habit of turning the facts of economics into “moral reprobation.” This is a problem of our times as well, not just the time of Engels. How often do we hear talk about our current crisis as a product of “greed” on the part of Wall Street bankers and that they should pay their “fair share” of taxes and such rubbish as if the decay of capitalism is a moral disorder on the part of the ruling class instead of a structural disorder that requires the replacement of the system rather than remedial Sunday school classes for the capitalists.

But all this has been treated of in the previous chapter of Anti-Dühring and Engels wants to move on (Cf. “Frederick Engels on the Theoretical Development of Modern Capitalism” in the November 2011 Political Affairs). Engels will now turn his attention to Dühring’s new system of viewing socialism which is called “the natural system of society.”

Dühring bases his system of socialism on what he calls the “universal principle of justice” which applies everywhere and is independent of historical and economic facts. This is enough to disqualify it as idealistic nonsense but Engels wants to philosophically pepper spay Dühring for having the gall to attack Marx for being unclear and fuzzy as to what type of socialism he believes in. It appears that the demands made in the name of the workers in the Communist Manifesto are “erroneous half measures” far inferior to Dühring’s ideas which represent “a comprehensive schematism of great import in human history.”

Marx, according to Dühring, thinks of socialism as “nothing more than the corporative ownership by groups of workers … an ownership that is both individual and social.” Engels is upset because this is far from anything Marx has suggested and in truth actually applies to the system that Dühring has concocted.

Dühring advocates a federation of independent economic communes which compete with one another and which have absolute freedom of movement from one commune to another. In this crazy system the wealthy successful communes will out compete the poorly run communes which will become defunct as the people will all end up moving to the well run ones.

Production within the communes stays the same as production in the past — i.e., the communes are still capitalist in nature even though controlled by the workers. So the greatly touted natural system of justice and the new socialism amounts to the fact, Engels says, that “the commune takes the place of the capitalists.”

What are Dühring’s views on the most basic form of all hitherto existing methods of production — i.e., the division of labor? With respect to the primary division, that between TOWN and COUNTRY (or industry and agriculture) he has little to say beyond some common place remarks about its “inevitable” nature and the possibility of overcoming it in the future. Thin gruel from Engels’ point of view.

When it comes to the modern division of labor in trade and industry Dühring is very vague and only says that we have an “erroneous division of labor” and that all will be remedied in the future “as soon as account is taken of the various natural conditions and personal capabilities [of the workers].” Engels doesn’t say so, but Dühring’s views here are suspiciously similar to those of Plato in the Republic and very far from the socialist analysis of Marx to which Engels now turns.

Marx tells us that in all societies where production springs up “spontaneously” (including capitalism) we discover the means of production dominate the people not the other way around. The first great division of labour saw the development of towns and cities surrounded by peasant agriculturalists. This division has doomed rural people for thousands of years, Marx says, to “mental torpidity” and enslaved the town dwellers to their own specialized trade. This “stunting” of humanity increases with the increase of the division of labor.

Under capitalism the workers become tied to their machines and to one specific function and one tool. Capitalism, Marx says in Das Kapital “converts the laborer into a crippled monstrosity. by forcing his detail dexterity at the expense of a world of productive capabilities and instincts…. The individual himself is made the automatic motor of a fractional operation.” How much this has been alleviated by the modern day union movement varies from country to country and in proportion to the percentage of workers who are unionized. The large number of working people in the US for example, that vote Republican shows that “mental torpidity” is not confined to the rural populations of Texas, Iowa or Alaska (to name a few).

It is not just the workers who suffer under the present day division of labor but also, Engels says, the “empty-minded bourgeois” chasing after profits (Donald Trump comes to mind), the lawyers dominated by “fossilized legal conceptions” and so-called “educated classes” of society plagued by “local narrow-mindedness” and “mental short-sightedness”– just think of the tribe of Sunday morning news pundits paraded before the public by all the major TV networks, or the platoons of professors giving advice about everything under the sun and hardly agreeing on anything other than that capitalism is still the best of all possible economic formations.

But how are we to overcome this division of labor and the consequent alienation of humanity from its potentials and possibilities? One way only says Engels: “in making itself the master of all the means of production to use them in accordance with a social plan, society puts an end to the former subjection of men to their own means of production.” In other words, socialism based on central planning and most importantly — a feature historically absent in 20th century socialist societies due to their premature appearance in economically backward conditions — planning democratically controlled and carried out by the working people themselves. The former alienating division of labor will be done away with as “society cannot free itself unless every individual is freed.”

Engels says that this is not just a “fantasy” or a “pious wish.” He maintains that the state of industrial development in the 1870s is so advanced that society could “reduce the time required for labour to a point which measured by our present conceptions, will be small indeed.” This figure needs to be actually quantified — but the point is all the goodies needed to live and thrive could be created with people just working a few hours a week and with no one being chained to any one boring and unsatisfying job. The growth in productivity since Engels’ day must make this even more true today.

Engels quotes Das Kapital: “The employment of machinery does away with the necessity of crystallizing this distribution [of labor-tr] after the manner of Manufacture, by the constant annexation of a particular man to a particular function. Since the motion of the whole system does not proceed from the workman, but from the machinery, a change of persons can take place at any time without an interruption of the work….”

Modern capitalism with its constant crises and dislocations of industrial centers and working people and financial catastrophes makes, Marx says, it necessary that we posit as a “fundamental law of production, variation of work” so that modern workers have to be ready to change jobs and learn new skills or leave the labor market. This disrupts lives and threatens widespread social disorder. Only socialist planning and a system that puts people before profits can prevent society from self destructing under the contradictions generated by the present capitalist world market which, in the name of profits first and people last, fragments both human individuals and their social relations with others which inevitably results from the private appropriation of socially created wealth.

Engels also says that the abolition of capitalism and the development “one single vast plan” which harmoniously “dovetails” industry and the means of production so that the differences between town and country are overcome is a prerequisite to overcoming environmental degradation and “present poisoning the air water and land.” To this must be added the current disaster of human induced global warming which simply cannot be dealt with as long as capitalism remains the dominant economic system. This problem was not seen in Engels’ day and now, despite the overwhelming scientific evidence of impending doom, the various capitalist powers are unwilling to take the drastic regulatory measures needed to deal with the problem.

Engels maintains that none of these claims he is making is “utopian” but that they are logical conclusions of scientific central planning and the abolition of the difference between town and country. It looks as if the towns, or rather the great cities (such as New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Beijing, etc., etc., will have be abolished as well! Engels says that it “is true that in the huge towns civilization has bequeathed us a heritage which it will take much time and trouble to get rid of.” But, “the great towns will perish.”

No, this is not Pol Pot, it is Frederick Engels and he is saying this because he envisions a complete redistribution of the population under socialism in order to get the “most equal distribution possible of modern industry.” So the abolition of the separation of town and country means the abolition of the cities. They must and will be eliminated “however protracted a process it may be.” This might just be a little too “utopian” and perhaps with the progress of science and communications since the 1870s, especially the growth of the internet, the contradictions between town and country can be resolved without offing the Big Apple.

In any event, leaving the abolition of cities aside, the point Engels wants to make is that Dühring’s view of socialism leaves out of account that building socialism will necessitate “revolutionizing from top to bottom the old method of production and first of all putting an end to the old division of labour.” Dühring thinks that the state can just take over production as is and harmonize it to people’s “natural appetites and personal capabilities.” He also thinks the division between town and country is natural and inevitable and has no plan for putting an end to the alienation and crippling of human capabilities that result from this division.

So much for Engels’ critique of Dühringian socialism’s handling of production. In the penultimate chapter of Anti-Dühring Engels will discuss the problems of distribution.

1. Anti-Dühring Part III Chapter III “Production.”
2. Engels is referring to an economic crises of the 1870s.

This month PM Press, the Oakland, CA. publisher founded by AK Press founder Ramsey Kanaan and others, is publishing Gilbert’s memoirs. The book, titled Love and Struggle: My Life in SDS, the Weather Underground, and Beyond, is certain to be included in the top tier of books having to do with the period of US history known as the Sixties. There is no self-pity within these pages, but lots of self-reflection. In what can only be considered a refreshing approach, Gilbert takes full responsibility for the path he has chosen and explains that path in an intelligently political manner and with a decidedly leftist understanding. Love and Struggle combines objective history, personal memory, and a critical perspective into a narrative that is at once an adventuresome tale and a political guide through the past fifty years.

Gilbert begins his story by describing his youth and his developing awareness that the United States was not what he had been led to believe it was. An Eagle Scout who believed the myths inherent in American exceptionalism, he was unprepared for the cognitive dissonance he underwent while watching the attacks by law enforcement on civil rights marchers in the US South. That sense of conflict deepened when he headed off to Columbia University. By 1965, angered by the US war on the Vietnamese and armed with a well-researched understanding of why the US was really involved there, Gilbert was organizing Columbia students to join antiwar protests. Like many of his contemporaries, by 1968 he was an anti-imperialist and working full-time against the war in Vietnam and racism in the United States. By 1969, he was one of the original members of Weatherman and by April 1970 he was underground.

Gilbert tells his story with a hard-learned humility. Occasionally interjecting his personal life–his loves and failures, his relationship with his family–with his political journey, it is the politics which are foremost in this memoir. A true revolutionary, every other aspect of Gilbert’s life is subsumed to the revolution. This kind of life is not an easy one. Indeed, it arguably makes the life of an ascetic monk look easy by comparison. After all, the monk is only trying to change himself, while the committed revolutionary wants to change the world into one where justice prevails; a world that by its very structure resists such change.

Love and Struggle carefully examines the history of the periods Gilbert has lived in. From the early days of the antiwar movement and the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) to the public street-fighting arrogance of early Weatherman; from Weatherman’s transition to the Weather Underground Organization (WUO) and its growing isolation from the New Left it was a part of; and from the post-Vietnam war US left to the Brink robbery and its aftermath, Gilbert keeps the politics front and center in his text. In his discussion of the period between Weather’s publication of its essential work Prairie Fire and its immediate aftermath, Gilbert provides an insight into the debates inside WUO and among its supporters in the years after the peace treaty was signed with northern Vietnam. His portrayal of the differences around theory being debated in the WUO serve as a broader description of the debates raging throughout the new left as the US intervention in Vietnam’s anti-colonial struggle neared its end. For those of us who were politically involved at the time, the debates ring with familiarity: national liberation over class; the interaction between race and class in the US; the oppression of women and white male privilege. In a testimony to his writing abilities, Gilbert’s discussion of the issues makes them as alive in this book as those arguments actually were in the mid-1970s. His keen political sense reveals the interplay between different political perspectives, understandings of history, and the always present contests of ego. The political arguments outlined by Gilbert (especially when describing the battle inside WUO) are still relevant today. Their echoes are present in the General Assemblies of the Occupy Wall Street movement and in forums more specific and less specific across the nation. Gilbert’s presentation of the essential WUO arguments that challenges the overriding role of class in the nature of oppression is not only reasoned and impassioned, it is worth studying and makes points useful to the future of anti-imperialist struggle in the United States Furthermore, the book includes an ongoing and excellent discussion of the nature of white supremacy and white skin privilege. For anyone who has spent time involved in the Occupy movement the past few months, the relevance of this latter discussion is all too familiar.

For those looking for a sensationalist account of life as a revolutionary or a confession, they should look elsewhere. David Gilbert’s memoir is a political account of a political life. Every action undertaken, every decision made is examined via the eye of a leftist revolutionary. This does not mean there are no page-turning moments in the book, however. Indeed, the sections describing Weather’s move underground and Gilbert’s daily life off the grid are interesting and revealing, as are those describing the attempts by WUO members to evade capture. The descriptions of Gilbert’s clandestine life and his subsequent moving back aboveground and then back under are also riveting.

Underlying the entire narrative is a current of what is best described as self-criticism; of Weather, the New Left, armed struggle and, ultimately, of Gilbert himself. As anyone who has experienced something akin to a self-criticism session can attest, such sessions can be emotionally wrenching episodes of retribution and petty anger. They can also be tremendously useful when conducted humanely. Gilbert’s written attempts at this exercise in Love and Struggle lean toward the latter expression while also providing interesting and useful considerations to the aforementioned issues (along with issues related to those criticisms). Gilbert’s realization that his ego occasionally caused him to make decisions that weren’t based on politically sound rationales is something any radical leader should take into account. In fact, Gilbert’s continuing struggle with his ego and it’s place in the decisions he made while free reminded me of a maxim relayed to me a couple times in my life; once by an organizer for the Revolutionary Union in Maryland and once by a friend from the Hog Farm commune. That maxim is simply: if you start believing that the revolution can’t exist without you, then it’s time to leave center stage and go back to doing grunt work where nobody knows (or cares) who you are. In other words, you are not the revolution so take your ego out of it.

In the well-considered catalog of books dealing honestly with the period of history known as the Sixties in the United States, Love and Struggle is an important addition. Borrowing his technique from memoir, confession, and objective history-telling, David Gilbert has provided the reader of history with the tale of a person and a time. Simultaneously, he has given the reader inclined to political activism a useful, interesting, and well-told example of one human’s revolutionary commitment to social change no matter what the cost.

Both leaders said what would be expected of them under these circumstances. Haniyeh asserted that his movement’s “presence with the Brotherhood threatens the Israeli entity,” and Badie reaffirmed the Brotherhood’s commitment to “issues of liberation, foremost the Palestinian issue” (MENA and AP, December 26).

It is very telling that Haniyeh’s first official visit outside Gaza as prime minister was to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood headquarters in Cairo’s Moqattam district. He shared his message – of resistance against Israeli occupation, national unity with rival Fatah and reaching out to Muslim countries – and then resumed his regional tour.

Since 2006, Hamas has attempted, but largely failed to win the approval of governments in Muslim-majority countries. Muslim solidarity was the thrust of Hamas’ foreign policy, aimed at lessening Palestinian political and financial dependence on the US and other Western governments. It failed because, as it turned out, US financial and political leverage is too overpowering and far-reaching for a relatively small movement like Hamas to singlehandedly challenge. But, as Haniyeh himself reiterated, times are changing

In the first and second rounds of Egyptian elections, the Brotherhood’s newly created Freedom and Justice party won more than 35 percent of the vote. The electoral success was hardly an anomaly. The Islamic Nahda party, which formed the first post-revolutionary government in Tunisia, won more than 40 percent of the vote last October. Morocco’s Justice and Development party won the November elections and the Islamic leaning of Libya’s new political set up is all too palpable. There have been marks of Islamic political influence in other countries across the region.

The reformation of the political landscape in the Arab region has tempted many to infer polarizing, if not frightening conclusions. Israeli army Home Front Command Chief Major General Eyal Eisenberg was one of the first in Israel to refer to these developments as an Arab Spring turning into a “radical Islamic winter”. He said, “This leads us to the conclusion that through a long-term process, the likelihood of an all-out war is increasingly growing” (Arutz Sheva, September 5).

However, what truly worries Israel is not the radicalization of Muslim societies, but the rise of Islamic politics to represent a rational, mainstream political discourse. It threatens Israel because it could rally many Arabs around one cohesive political agenda, and repositions Palestine, once more, as central to what many Muslim intellectuals refer to as the “Islamic Awakening”.

Israeli fear mongering aside, the US – Israel’s main benefactor – must find ways to co-exist with the new political arrangement. Other Western governments too “will have to adapt to a power shift they have long sought to prevent,” wrote Roula Khalaf and Heba Saleh in the Financial Times (December 28).

For Israel, however, the transformation in regional politics will prove unbearable. It is not Tunisia’s Nahda party that Israel is most concerned about, of course; it is Hamas. This is partly what compelled Haniyeh to venture out of Gaza. As the US is hoping to control, if not manage, the rise of Islamic parties, Hamas aims at ensuring a primary position for Palestine – as seen through the prism of the Islamic movement – in the region’s new political landscape.

There is little doubt that Hamas’ rise to political prominence in 2006, and the numerous subsequent attempts at isolating and destroying it will influence new Islamic parties in various Arab countries. Hamas’ ability to survive has certainly registered among new Muslim politicians in Egypt and elsewhere. Now, with the early fruits of the Egyptian revolution being plucked by Islamic parties, Hamas is guardedly making its move. Hamas is a “jihadi movement of the Brotherhood with a Palestinian face,” said Haniyeh in Cairo.

A quick look at the roots of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine shows that Haniyeh was hardly exaggerating. Since the Society of the Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Ismailiyya, Egypt in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna and a few others, it quickly found in Palestine a rally cry to unite Muslims through the entire region. The first link between the movement and Palestine was formed in 1935, when Abd al-Rahman al-Banna (the founder’s brother) visited Palestine and met with the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini.

The Brotherhood became visible during the revolt of 1936, as they communicated the Palestinian message with an Islamic tone to the rest of the Arab world. The cause of Palestine promptly became the central mission and calling of the Brotherhood, as Hasan al-Banna himself headed the newly founded General Central Committee to Aid Palestine.

More, in April 1948, when most Arab governments delayed in partaking in the defense of Palestine, the Muslim Brotherhood deployed three battalions of volunteers. Estimates of the number of Brotherhood volunteers in Palestine during the war and the subsequent Nakba vary, but Hasan al-Banna himself noted, in March 1948, that the movement had approximately 1,500 volunteers in Palestine.

The relationship between the Brotherhood and Palestine had it ebbs and flows, but the rapport was never completely severed. Even before Hamas was officially established in 1987, the movement functioned under various classifications, all directly affiliated with Egypt’s Brotherhood.

The recent Cairo meeting between Haniyeh and Badie could be understood within that historical context, representing a triumphant reunion and possibly open coordination. This would once again rejuvenate the Brotherhood’s Palestine connection, and grant Hamas greater political leverage – after years of isolation, and despite the current political turmoil in the region.

Of course, Hamas’ challenges are many and growing. Leading among them is Israel’s violent escalation in Gaza, and the unremitting US pressure. Still, it is expected that Hamas’ political message and outlook will continue to find balance between Palestinian exceptionality and the more inclusive Arab and Islamic framework.

By venturing out of Gaza, Haniyeh is hoping to expand the diameters of the Palestinian Islamic movement into Egypt and beyond – thus reclaiming what Hamas once considered ‘the strategic depth’ of the Palestinian cause. While such a push failed to attain its objectives in 2006, 2012 is a brand new year.

One Law for Lion and Ox is Oppression.

— William Blake

Where is the place of understanding?  Where is wisdom to be found?

— The  Book of Job

Info coming at us at the speed of light—gigabytes per nano-sec—and our horse-and-buggy bio-chem brains struggle with ancient grammars, syntaxes and texts!  Even our metaphors are now wretchedly overwrought: Not, “how to connect the dots,” but how to perceive, measure, record and duck the shot-gunned info-pellets rushing at our faces!  No wonder the world has gone gaga—not Lady!—for predictions!  “The world is too much with us,” so maybe those Mayan calendrical types knew a thing or two.  Maybe Nostradamus.  Maybe Cayce.  Somebody must know something!

Last decade, in September, ‘07, I posted a piece called “Can the Left and Right Unite?”  That was long before President “Hopey-Changey” had risen on his rhetorical pinions just long enough to foist on the gullible–one of the best bait-and-switch” acts in U.S. political history.  It was a year before the Lehman Brothers “Great Recession” began; before TARP; before Europe’s implosion; before Tahrir Square; before the B.P. and Fukushima disasters; before the Tea Party and Occupy Movements; before Bin Laden’s and Saddam’s and Kim’s and Gaddafi’s demise, and Representative Giffords’ near-demise; before the Supreme Court sanctified corporate, financial, electoral control; before the National Defense Authorization Act, etc.!

Four years ago, the chief divisions in the country had to do with prosecuting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—and most Americans were united in thinking “terrorists” the enemy, but not sure how to get them.  Nobody had declared the American homeland a “battlefield” in the War on Terror—with all the ominous implications of such a designation.

Now, the war in Afghanistan slogs on, and the shadow of our wars in Mesopotamia will haunt us through the ages.  The possibility of war with Iran is a warmonger’s wet-dream now—and the sheets are gross and soggy.  Now, perhaps, it can begin to be said and heard: It was Bushwhackian, Rumsfeldian, Cheney-Reese and Powellesque, Pearle and Wolfowitz idiocy to attack Iraq; and our heedless diversion and waste of resources has helped to bankrupt us financially and morally.  We’ve continued to hammer, frack and bomb our egg of a planet and now we’re dancing on a thin eggshell—and we’re mostly tap-dancing alone, not waltzing with a willing partner.

Not impressed by Obama’s card-shark, Mac-the-Knife routine, I sat out the last presidential election and urged others to purposively—not apathetically–do so, too.  But that was then.

As of now, there is only one candicate for whom I’d seriously consider voting.

The main reasons are: (1) He’s the only one who talks about our over-extended “Empire.”  He actually uses that word!  (2) He’s the most anti-war.  He talks about employing diplomacy a lot more and military force a lot less.  Give brains a chance!  (3) He is the only candidate who wants to abolish the Fed—and offers sound reasons for doing so.  (4) He presents well-reasoned arguments, not “9-9-9” style gibberish.  (5) He has argued his beliefts carefully and consistently for decades.  (6) His personal life has been a model of good citizenship and family values.

I’m talking about Ron Paul, of course, and I can hear the clamor of my “progressive” (formerly, “liberal”) friends wondering if I, too, have lost my prayer beads.  So, here’s my take: If we lived in a truly “free” society, where the masses had access to the skinny about how the System works, the high and growing levels of corruption and decadence in every branch of our government—federal, state, local—and if we had an educated working class, making the best-informed tactical and strategic moves to advance common values, able to work their way through the morass of media-corporate-government hype and propaganda… I’d say, Hold off, final victory will be ours!

But nothing today smells remotely like that!  This is not Sweden, Iceland, Switzerland, nor is it Never-Neverland where people don’t grow old and sick and tired and die.  We are a globe-straddling Empire, imposing our lifestyle and disposing of our opponents with engineered coups and revolutions, and our modus operandi is more akin to Tony Soprano’s than to the amorphous “good guys” we esteem ourselves. Surveiling and managing the planet, in ways that are often nasty and devious, we are well along the usual trajectory of past “super-powers”: expansion, over-expansion, attacks abroad and crumbling infrastructure within, and, finally, kaput, nada, nada y nada! 

We’ve always been an Empire—check out latter correspondence between Jefferson and Adams. … Our nastiest business, our Civil War, had a lot more to do with managing the newly acquired Western territories—agrarian or industrial motif?—than with freeing slaves.  (Do we really think recently arrived Irish immigrants wanted nothing more than to get drafted into “Mr. Lincoln’s War”?  Check out the New York City draft riots for a quick refresher!)

We like to tell ourselves we’re the kind of people who only go to war for noble reasons, but the fact is… we’ve been the most successful conquerors in human history and we’ve stirred up hornet’s nests everywhere.  We have been the “Now” people, barely looking back, whose forward motion has been propelled by carrots dangled by illusionists.

When the present moment is as slippery as this one, people are apt to take solace in nostalgia for simpler times or in  fantasizing a better tomorrow.  (When miscreants like Newt Gingrich are taken seriously as “historians,” you know we’ve got serious problems about learning from our past!)  About “tomorrow”–we’re a species condemned to hope.  Hope and Imagination are always “leaps of faith,” but they work better when they are informed.

Eighteenth-century “Romantic” poet Blake was on the cusp of England’s Industrial Revolution—and he didn’t like the smell of things!  A visionary from childhood, seeing angels in trees, he thought anyone could be a prophet… so long as they carefully examined life whirling around them and life within.  “Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ’d,” he wrote.  Two hundred years later, our crystal balls are murky and all our messengers are suspect.

As we spin out of whirligig 2011 into the free-fall gravity of 2012, about information-overload, we may cry out with Job, “Where is the place of understanding?  Where is wisdom to be found?”

The U.S. has done some terrible things in this world and some would say we’ve been in a kind of karmic blow-back since 2001.  We collectively grieve, rightly so, at the horror of a woman losing her parents and three children in a Christmas-day blaze in Connecticut.  How senseless, tragic and bizarre!  Can a loving God permit such horrors on Christmas day?  To understand the kind of tragedy that has befallen Iraqis since our invasion and continuing occupation, one would have to multiply the Stamford horror about 1 million times over the past eight years!

Not because he has done evil, but simply to test and prove his faith and goodness, Job’s children and grandchildren are killed, his cattle killed, and he is cursed with boils.  And his wife asks, “Dost thou still retain thy integrity?  Curse God and die.”  She is empathetic; she sees her husband’s searing wounds and advises him to choose the oblivion of death instead.  Job tells her to stop talking foolishness; he will suffer much more, if need be.  And…, he does.  And before it all ends with a show of force and a little more info—straight from the Whirlwind’s mouth!—about how things really work, Job tells his three comforters (really, intellectual tormentors), “Till I die, I will not remove my integrity from me.”

“Integrity” is the key word in this extraordinary, pre-Grecian drama.  And if we are going to get through our next pivotal year intact — and, very likely, re-constituted — it is essential that we understand that concept the way it was meant back then.  It is similar to our word “integer” or single unit, and its meaning has a Taoistic, Asian flavoring rather than our looser, modern sense of “general honesty” or “decency”—difficult and noble as those virtues are.  Rather, the sense here is of “wholeness.”  Job can no sooner remove his identity than he can remove his skin.  His integrity is all-of-a-piece with whom he is—his identity, his being.

Now for Blake: the ox has his “integrity” being an ox, and the lion his just being him.  Both are powerful with legit claims on the world to sustain them as they are and wish to be.  You wouldn’t want to pull a wagon with two lions and you wouldn’t want to take down a wildebeast with a couple of oxen.  Each has its place, each does its thing; and if the lion can lie down with the lamb, he can also lie down with the ox.

Everywhere one looks in the world today one sees tension and divisions, strife, a lack of clarity, and a constant resort to the dialogue of guns, knives and bombs.  Did we fight the Cold War only to inherit a world gone mad, dividing along ancient fault-lines—Sunni/Shiite, Jewish/Muslim, Christian/Muslim–and along new ones of class?  Half of all Americans are at 200% or less of the poverty level for a family of four.  To put it another way, fifty percent of us are not “getting by” or just barely getting by, and most of those who are “better off” are scared as hell.  And people who are scared are easily manipulated—especially when doused with fear of foreign threats.  (Just ask Goebbels!)

Amidst the maya of illusions and delusions, we stumble along in our made-up world.  We can only see through a glass darkly, and the glass is a fifty-inch wide-screen HDTV with surround sound—and 3-D is coming!  Amidst the maya, we lose precision in our language, our discourse, our thinking, our literature, our relations with each other, with the powerful and with the downtrodden.  Professor Gingrich, commenting on Herman Caine’s alleged sexual abuses, remarks that he is “sorry for he and his famly.”  That’s it!  I’m outta hea’!   Here’s a guy who brags about being an “historian” and the two dozen books he’s written, and he doesn’t know the objective case of pronouns?

I don’t put much stock in American elections anymore.  (Maybe we need “international observers”… but who do we trust?)  The best one can hope for is what Ed Sullivan would call, “a really good shew.”  We put far too much faith in the figurehead of our president when our history since Kennedy should have shown us that even a top banana can be easily peeled—exploded in the public square, and then re-packaged as an aberrance, anomoly, a myth.  So now we’re stuck with this: Even an election victory that championed populist values of both the Left and the Right would be hemmed in by thousands of special interests and lobbysists, not to mention billions of contrapuntal bucks!

That’s what we’re up against… and any New Populist campaign must recognize those electronic realities.  Nevertheless, such a campaign would mean a voice raised and heeded.  It would mean a resurgence of resistance to the Neoliberal agenda of war and exploitation that both Left and Right can now oppose.

The best reason for the lion and the ox to collaborate is, ironically, to maintain their integrity!  Because the Corporate State is rapidly robbing all of us of cherished core values like “live and let live,” a “helping hand,” “all in the same boat” and the “individualism” essential to thinking and acting without duress.  The media mish-mash of sounds and images adds to the kaleidoscopic confusion, and no one seems to have remembered to unwind a string as we approach the Minotaur’s lair.

The real enemy of Occupiers and Tea-partiers is not the other guy, but the faraway robotic types guiding the predator drones above our global rafters.  How do you make sense of it all when you’re beaten down and scared of losing your home, your job, your health, your family?

For years I was for a woman’s right to choose… and I still am.  But, when I heard Paul speak of his experience as a young doctor, going into one hospital room where an aborted fetus had been unceremoniously discarded and walking down the hall into another where every effort was being made to save a mother and her life-endangered baby… I saw his opposition from another point of view, and felt the sincerity of that point of view.  Now, to counter-argue, one might say that to prevent the need for abortions better sex education should be available.  And that adoptions should be encouraged, etc.

Better sex education… and better every kind of education!  Had we not fallen so notoriously behind in our test scores, we might not be in the mess we’re in now.  Had we paid attention to the infrastructure of education, bridges, public utilities, transportation and communication, the Arts, we’d be able to get through this next hell of a year standing together, with a lot more equanimity.

“Opposition is true Friendship,” Blake wrote.

The “separation of Church and State” that Americans cherish was never meant to be a separation of morals and the State.  Yet, it is our moral core, our “integrity,” that has been lost amidst the funhouse mirrors of commercialism, consumerism, militarism, ethnocentrism, more and more and more.

In this winter of our discontent, the war clouds gather and austerity miseries grind the souls of those who have no homes, or broken homes.  We’re in a poisoned mine shaft and the canaries are singing. … Can we interpret their varied notes in time?

Neumann reveals that Moshe Dayan expelled Palestinians even as late as 1951!

Despite some moments of remorse, the former member of this terror group tells the interviewer that he refuses to talk about the massacres, in particular, because he participated in them. He also tries to portray Palestinian villages as all made of straw and mud houses! Perhaps the selective amnesia that has afflicted almost all Jewish Israelis has not spared Neumann.

Warning to Palestinian refugees watching this: it can be really difficult to listen to parts of this testimony. I had to stop the video twice … the nonchalance with which Neumann describes (in clearly sanitized language) the forced expulsion, the killings of farmers tending their grapevines, … is overwhelming.

The 1989 novel, titled The Third Reich, is the diary of a German office worker named Udo Bergen and his vacation in Spain. There is a girlfriend, a couple they meet, the hotel owner Frau Else, a man named Quernado who rents paddle boats to tourists and has grotesque burn scars on his body. The girlfriend leaves after a fright; the man in the couple drowns and the hotel owner’s husband is taken away to hospice with terminal cancer. The presence of a board game based on the second world war and also called The Third Reich hangs over the story like a surreal presence. Udo is an expert in board games based on World War Two and even makes extra money writing about strategies for different gaming magazines. For most of the book he and Quernado are engaged in a the Third Reich game. Udo is hoping that he can win as Germany while Quernado’s pieces represent the allies. It is as if the game is as real as life and life is only a game. Bergen even says to his game-playing friend Conrad upon his return from Spain: “We (are) all essentially ghosts on a ghostly General Staff.”

It seems that Quernado identifies Bergen as not only an opponent in the game, but as a potential embodiment of Nazi Germany itself. This is despite Bergen stating specifically to Quernado that he is much more of an anti-Nazi than any Nazi at all. Quernado ignores Bergen and plays the game as if he were fighting the war. Like much of Europe and certainly Germany, the fact of World War Two’s horrors defines everything, albeit in a rather murky manner. The game is nothing but a game except when it becomes more, as it does in the mind of Quernado. History has a similar trajectory. As long as it remains in books and museums (or games) it has little threat. It is when history becomes real that it constitutes something potentially more dangerous.

Like most of Bolano’s novels, The Third Reich comes across as if it were written in a detached fog. Although the narrator Bergen is part of every scene that occurs, his narration of the life he is in the middle of is simultaneously distant and intimate. Like fog, the closer one gets to the situation or person being described, the clearer Bergen’s tale become. Observations about the other characters in the novel are provided with an omniscience that, once considered, are mostly Bergen’s selfish perceptions. As one follows the interactions of the various characters in Bergen’s beach vacation, the egocentric nature of modern individuated society becomes apparent. Every single person portrayed lives alone amongst the crowd in the Spanish resort town. Relationships easily formed are just as easily dismissed. Friendships seem to be anything but that and love is barely more meaningful than renting a room.

Bolano is a master of style and story. The seemingly innocuous life of Udo Bergen the office worker and gamer is on second glance not what it appears. Death, sex, intrigue and the threat of violence simmer beneath the thin flesh of Bolano’s tale. After all is said and done little has changed. That is our curse. I am reminded of the line from Eliot’s The Waste Land: “Oed’ und leer das Meer.” Post industrial equals post-meaningful. Nothing plus nothing is still nothing. The charm is in the telling, not necessarily in the living. Bolano comprehends this fact and tells his story well.

It’s time for Zionist-funded electoral campaigns and solid promises to do the utmost and maybe the impossible for the “United States for Israel”.

The 2012 White House elections have unleashed a fierce race amongst the presidential hopefuls — who come this year in all colors, sizes and IQs — to kiss ass and suck up to the Israeli lobbies in the land of the free and home of the brave.

Sleeping with the enemy

And since all the candidates have consumed almost all the usual tricks to tout their own “do for Israel” credentials starting from accusing the Palestinians of hindering the peace process and denying Israel’s right to exist …. Right down to calling them terrorists, the republican White House hopeful, Newt Gingrich, has found himself in a position where he has to come up with a brand new trick that would enhance his approval rating in the race to the white house.

Being an expert on solutions for winning the future, Gingrich didn’t waste much time and decided to not only do the utmost but also the impossible for Israel’s sake by calling the Palestinians an “invented” people who could have voluntarily evacuated their homeland and chose to live elsewhere.

While I could conceal my annoyance over Gingrich’s outrageous and deceitful statement, which lacks both the minimum historical awareness and political wisdom, I find myself unable to hide my disgust of his disgraceful conduct.

Mr. Gingrich, as a presidential hopeful and a longtime politician, is supposed to be, in a way, representing the mainstream American diplomacy when he speaks to the foreign media — unless the Jewish channel is not considered that.

And if he as a person was not embarrassed to openly brown-nose Israel in that unprecedented and degrading manner, then he should have uttered those nonsense comments in a less public session, like at his country club and amongst the circle of Zionist financiers of his campaign who certainly would have been ecstatic to hear him ranting that way.

But for him to publicize this hate speech in a televised interview and furthermore repeat it during the presidential debates is an affront to the whole American diplomacy and a dangerous indication for a paradigm shift of that diplomacy in the Middle East.

Who allowed this plumpy Gingrich to act as Israel’s advocate while ironically running for the presidency of the United States? Who told him that he can put on his racist mask, erase decades of peace brokering, albeit not entirely successful, and start messing up the politics of one of the most volatile places on earth while hallucinating about its documented ancient history?

The Arabs and the Palestinians, whom he likes to see invented and therefore movable or even invisible, will not take his statement as a twisted attitude of some republican candidate but another proof of the American flagrant biased policy in the Middle East.

The last thing the United States needs right now as its troops are pulling out of the Iraqi swamp and being kicked out of the Afghan-Pakistan Death Valley is another (needless) stir of the anti-American sentiments in that part of the world.

Only Mr. Gingrich doesn’t think so. Appearing in his debates foolishly standing by his offensive remarks and apparently drunk with the encouraging feedback he gets from his Israeli friends, this former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives irresponsibly insists on sketching the landscape for the most dreadful political forecast in the Middle East.

It is ironic to see the millions of patriotic Americans rallying on the streets and literally occupying the country in protest over what they called the corporate greed and at the same time we find candidates like Gingrich so sick and blinded with greed they can’t feel the danger nor the shame in sleeping in the same bed with the real enemy.

How did America end up in that humiliating situation, where its presidential frontrunners are but a bunch of clowns who are always willing to dance to Israel’s favorite tune?

I take a look at all the 2012 presidential hopefuls and I fail to find any hope in them as they frantically compete with each other to suck up to Israel as if the American presidential polls will be held in Tel Aviv.

Mr. Gingrich has every right to brown-nose, kiss ass and suck up to whomever he likes.  He has the right to relinquish his national identity and pride … but he has no right to strip the Palestinians of that pride and identity while doing so.

Obviously, for someone that historically ignorant, Mr. Gingrich must have been tipped by one of his aides that what really troubled Israel recently is the release of Shlomo Sand’s bestseller book “The Invention of the Jewish People”.

Let’s talk history; history will tell who was invented

In that book, Prof. Sand attempts to prove that Jews now living in Israel and other places in the world are not at all descendants of the ancient people who inhabited the land of the Philistines in the late Bronze Age.

Prof. Sand is saying that nowaday Jews, who have been immigrating since over a century now to the land of Palestine, are but varied peoples that converted to Judaism during the course of history in different corners of Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean Basin and adjacent regions like in Yemen and Iraq.

According to Sand, the description of Jews as a wandering and self-isolating nation of exiles, who wandered across seas and continents, reached the ends of the earth and finally, with the advent of Zionism, made a U-turn and returned en masse to their orphaned homeland is nothing but “national mythology.” And therefore the Jewish people, historically speaking, and as Mr. Gingrich likes to call it, are invented.

But since Mr. Gingrich likes to see his ranting about the Palestinians as factually correct history …then maybe we should do it his way and talk history…only this time let’s do it right, but first I would like to introduce Professor Ze`ev Herzog to Mr. Gingrich.

Prof. Ze’ev Herzog teaches in the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University. He took part in the excavations of Hazor and Megiddo with Yigael Yadin and in the digs at Tel Arad and Tel Be’er Sheva with Yohanan Aharoni. He has conducted digs at Tel Michal and Tel Gerisa and has recently begun digging at Tel Yaffo. He is the author of books on the city gate in Palestine and its neighbors and on two excavations, and has written a book summing up the archaeology of the ancient city.

Prof. Herzog belongs to the modern generation of Israeli academic archeologists who have been digging, in a truly scientific approach, all over the land of Palestine ever since the establishment of the state of Israel but more extensively after 1967, in an attempt to reach some sort of a historical proof that would legitimatize the ancient Israelite story and therefore could back up and maybe make sense of the current Zionist land grab of Palestine.

After decades of extensive and arduous archeological excavations and search, Prof. Herzog and many other Israeli archeologists, such as Prof. Israel Finkelstein et al, reached a robust conclusion that somehow resembled Prof. Sand’s thesis of the invention of the Jewish people. Only in addition, they concluded that the greatest chunk of the Israelite story according to the Bible is a mere myth – the interesting parts of it copied out from both the Mesopotamian and the Egyptian mythologies and the remaining tedious details are just tribal narratives invented by the minds of the Hebrew scribes of the old testament.

Archeology and history of Palestine “Right or Albright”

Apart from the Bible, the first mention in history of the Philistines dates back to the late Bronze Age 1150-1200 BCE. They are unmistakably mentioned in Egyptian texts, as inscriptions on the walls of “Medinet Habu” the majestic temple of king Ramses III that documented the war with the Sea Peoples. The  Philistines are one of them, who inhabited the coastal land from Phoenicia down to Egypt. And the Philistines appear once again in the work of the Greek historian Herodotus in the middle of the 5th century BCE.

The archaeology of Palestine developed as a science at a relatively late date, in the late 19th and early 20th century.

The main push behind archaeological research in Palestine was the country’s relationship with the Holy Scriptures. The first excavators in Palestine were biblical researchers who were looking for the remains of the cities cited in the Bible.

Archaeology assumed momentum with the activity of William Foxwell Albright, who was convinced that if the ancient remains of Palestine were uncovered, they would furnish unequivocal proof of the historical truth of the events relating to the Jewish people in its land.  But it didn’t take long before “the spade and the Bible” school of Albright proved not right.

The biblical archaeology that developed following Albright and his pupils brought about a series of extensive digs at the important biblical tells: Megiddo, Lachish, Gezer, Shechem (Nablus), Jericho, Jerusalem, Ai, Giveon, Beit She’an, Beit Shemesh, Hazor, Ta’anach and others. The way was supposed to be straight and clear: every new finding should contribute to the building of a harmonious picture of the past.

Slowly, cracks began to appear in the picture. Paradoxically, a situation was created in which the glut of findings began to undermine the historical credibility of the biblical descriptions instead of reinforcing them.

The explanations became ponderous and the picture inelegant as the pieces didn’t fit together smoothly.

Here is a summary by Prof. Herzog, from his famous article “Deconstructing the Walls of Jericho” published in Ha’aretz Magazine, Friday, October 29, 1999 that explains why the harmonious picture of the historicity of the Promised Land collapsed:

Following 70 years of intensive excavations in the Land of Israel, archaeologists have found out: The patriarchs’ acts are legendary stories, we did not sojourn in Egypt or make an exodus, we did not conquer the land. Neither is there any mention of the empire of David and Solomon. Those who take an interest have known these facts for years, but Israel is a stubborn people and doesn’t want to hear about it

This is what archaeologists have learned from their excavations in the Land of Israel: the Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel. Perhaps even harder to swallow is that the united monarchy of David and Solomon, which is described by the Bible as a regional power, was at most a small tribal territory. And it will come as an unpleasant shock to many that the God of Israel, YHWH, had a female consort and that the early Israelite religion adopted monotheism only in the waning period of the monarchy and not at Mount Sinai.

Most of those who are engaged in scientific work in the interlocking spheres of the Bible, archaeology and the history of the Jewish people—and who once went into the field looking for proof to corroborate the Bible story—now agree that the historic events relating to the stages of the Jewish people’s mergence are radically different from what that story tells.

In other words, the Israelite history is invented and therefore the Zionists could have settled somewhere else than Palestine — Uganda, for example, as had been proposed by Herzl at the Sixth Zionist Congress at Basel on August 26, 1903.

Indeed, Mr. Gingrich, the British Uganda would have been a wiser choice and a better place to accommodate the influx of Jewish immigrants … it would have saved the Palestinians the unnecessary massacres and the ongoing ethnic cleansing, but most importantly it would have saved us the aggravation of listening to your pathetic tampering with the history of Palestine.

A fifth martyr, Louis Lingg, either took his own life while awaiting execution with his comrades, or he was murdered by the police. Lingg occupied a cell that was isolated from those of his comrades. According to newspaper reports at the time, Lingg deliberately detonated a small explosive device in his mouth, which blew off most of his face. It required several hours for him to die. No one has been able to explain how Lingg, an unrepentant defendant in the most famous prosecution in US history, and under tight security, was able to smuggle bombs into his tiny prison cell. Louis Lingg was almost certainly murdered by the police.

Alternatively, some historians have speculated that a sympathizer might have somehow managed to smuggle a small amount of explosives into the prison so that Lingg could deprive the state of the satisfaction of executing him. According to this theory, Lingg, not the state of Illinois, orchestrated his own death.

The Haymarket martyrs, as they were later called, were accused of inciting violence against the Chicago police force that, acting at the behest of prominent businessmen, frequently beat and murdered unarmed strikers with impunity. No police officer was ever tried, much less convicted, for their crimes against workers attempting to democratize the workplace. This theme should sound a familiar refrain to modern protestors.

No credible evidence was presented that tied any of the anarchists to the bomb that exploded among a mob of heavily armed policemen that had attacked a peaceful public rally in the Haymarket Square on the night of May 4, 1886. Sworn police testimony was contradicted by hundreds of eyewitnesses.

The Chicago anarchists were convicted of a crime they did not commit. Their trial, like later politically-motivated trials in the US, was a sham. The jurors, handpicked to convict by a specially appointed bailiff, were paid by local businessmen after getting the conviction and death sentence the business community desired. The prosecutors knew that Albert Parsons had already left the rally and was relaxing with his comrades at a nearby tavern when the incident occurred. It made no difference.

The Haymarket martyrs were fighting for the eight hour work day, the right to peaceful assembly and for freedom of speech. It was here that the idea of “one big union” originated. The men were tried and convicted for their anarchist beliefs rather than for the commission of any crime they committed.

America pays homage to statesmen like Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams — its so called founding fathers. But working people have never known or have forgotten those who gave their lives in the struggle for social and economic justice in the workplace. Few contemporary American workers honor their fallen comrades. We owe these courageous men and women our eternal gratitude.

Class-conscious working people of today are fighting the same pitched battle as the Haymarket martyrs more than 124 years ago. As we witness the final death throes of capitalism, America is regressing. We are drifting back to Chicago of the 1880s. Those who have employment are producing more for their employers, working longer hours for less pay and receiving fewer benefits.

Corporate profits are soaring. Fewer employers are paying pensions. The disparity between rich and poor is increasing. The centralized state is imposing austerity upon working people. As class conflict intensifies, we are seeing tiny enclaves of opulence embedded within a global matrix of poverty and want.

Despite alternating cycles of boom and bust, little has changed between the rich and poor since 1887. Justice is still being denied by a system that is antithetical to social and economic democracy. We are living in a dystopia that provides justice to those who have the money to pay for it and denies those who do not.

But let us remember that regression inevitably spawns an equal and opposite reaction. The class-consciousness and resistance that August Spies spoke of during his sentencing in a Chicago Courthouse long ago are reawakening. We see his prophesies manifested in the Occupy Wall Street movement that is spreading across the nation and hurtling around the Earth with the speed of electrons. We see them particularly manifested in Oakland, California. US workers are finally organizing and resisting tyranny again. The strike is still our greatest weapon.

The Haymarket martyrs were men of principle and men of ideas who envisioned a more egalitarian world and sought to create it. This is the threat they posed to capitalism and Chicago’s business community. Their struggle is also our struggle. We must embrace it.

The spirit of Albert Parsons, August Spies, George Engle, Adolph Fischer, and Louis Lingg, and countless others, preside over the OWS movements around the nation. These men lived large. They deserve to be remembered and honored. The state, despite its best efforts, could not murder an idea whose time had come. That idea has come again. In fact, it never really died.

There will be other martyrs. The global struggle for justice continues. Revolutionaries always circulate among us. Sometimes their heat sets everything ablaze.

Long live the spirit of resistance! Long live the spirit of the Haymarket Martyrs! Long live anarchy!

Author’s note: A detailed account of the lives of the Chicago anarchists is presented in a compelling book written by labor historian James Green titled Death in the Haymarket, published by Anchor Books.

In the late 1960s I was traveling low budget, working in vineyards, hitchhiking, sleeping under bridges or in youth hostels, visiting medieval castles.  After six months in Europe, I went to North Africa and the Middle East, then back to see more of Europe.  I got a ride on a Greek freighter, working my way, washing pots and pans in the galley.  The ship was headed for the French port of Marseilles. The month was May.

But as we neared our destination, the ship changed course.  ”The port is closed,” the captain said. “There’s a strike.”  He spoke little English and I understood no Greek, so that was all I knew for the moment.  We were now heading for Genoa, Italy, where we docked the next day.  There I left the ship and set about to see Italy.  I was thinking of going to Rome, but I’d barely set foot on land when I heard news of something really big happening in France.  It wasn’t just a local dock strike in Marseilles.

Being the incorrigibly curious person that I am, I had to see it, whatever it was, and the place to see it was obviously Paris.  So I set out northward, hitchhiking up through Switzerland and into France, where I lucked out and got a ride all the way to Paris.  I was doubly fortunate in that the driver was a Britisher who had spent much of his life studying French history, specializing in the late 19th century.  ”This is 1871 all over again,” he told me.

What happened in 1871?  I wanted to ask, but was too embarrassed to reveal my ignorance of French history.  I could nevertheless look around me now and see that the whole country was shut down, clearly in a state of extreme upheaval.

The driver turned on the radio from time to time, and we heard President Charles de Gaulle making an impassioned speech to the nation. Not understanding French, I only caught the closing line. “Vive la république!”  Then they played La Marseillaise.

“He’s finished,” the driver told me.  ”Just like Louis Napoleon.”  He spoke with the assurance of one who knew his subject.

We passed fields and vineyards.  When we got to the toll roads, we were asked by the local toll-keepers for donations to support the strike.

It was evening when we reached Paris. Darkness had fallen, and a loud banging sound of explosions could be heard from not too far away.  ”Do you think they’re shooting it out?” I asked.  The driver shook his head.  He looked worried

“Let me off here,” I said.  ”I have to see what’s happening.”

“That wouldn’t be wise,” he advised me.

The explosions were somewhere off to the right.

I promised him I would be careful, and, thanking him for the ride, I set out in the direction of the blasts.  Looking back at my youthful curiosity, I still shudder at my presumptions of immortality.  Having already passed through so many ostensibly dangerous places, I’d come to feel as though I were a non-material being, a ghost-traveler, immune to the hazards of the road.

The dark streets were empty, and all the lights in the buildings seemed to be off.  I could hear the hollow knocking of my footsteps on the pavement, and I wondered where all the people were.  After walking a few blocks, I came to a broad avenue where a large crowd was gathered.  As I got closer, I saw they were behind a barricade fashioned of cobble stones and whatever was at hand.  Making my way to the front of the crowd, I saw in the distance a phalanx of riot police.  They were launching bombs or grenades in our direction which burst with a very loud sound and a flash of light.  I guessed that they were intended for psychological effect, as they didn’t seem to be causing physical damage or injuries.  Nobody seemed bothered by them.

Finally the gendarmes charged, and everybody ran up side streets, then regrouped.  I watched this repeated several times over.  Finally, late in the night, I found a space on the floor of a large crowded hall where I could unroll my sleeping bag.  I think it was in the Sorbonne University, which was occupied by the students.

In the morning I went out to see what was going on.  Everything was fairly quiet, with only a few cars on the streets.  The gendarmes were nowhere to be seen, not even the traffic cops who normally stood in the intersections. In their place were the demonstrators, the students and workers, directing the traffic. That sight impressed me, a world of no gendarmes.  They had been driven from the streets, and the world of Paris was now in the hands of the demonstrators.

It was an eerily calm and peaceful world. Shops and stores were closed.  No windows seemed to be broken.  Debris littered the streets, and there were still the remains of barricades here and there.  Nobody manning them now, the police being gone.

I thought of the riots which were then taking place in so many in U.S. cities, where there’d been burning and looting, but there was none of that here in Paris.  I marveled at the order and self-discipline of the French; truly a cultured people, who rioted without breaking windows.  I used the word “riot,” but was it a riot?  Or was it something else?

I saw it all, but I had no idea what I was looking at.  A revolution?  Was this what a revolution looked like?  Surely it couldn’t be a revolution, but what was really going on around here?

Being unable to speak French, I finally found someone who spoke English, and I asked, “What’s happening?”  The guy looked at me as though I were the biggest idiot he’d ever in his life encountered, and he said: “Can’t you see for yourself?”

Finally I looked up Bernard, a friend who lived in the Latin Quarter.  I’d met him a couple years earlier, on my way to Japan.  He’d been out in the demonstrations of the night before. Since he was a friend, I felt I could ask him the question nobody else seemed willing to answer.  ”What is going on?” I asked him. “Can’t you see for yourself?” he replied.

I stayed a few more days in Paris, then set out for England.  But on reaching the port of Calais, I found that it too was closed.  Why had I even bothered to go to Calais?  I should’ve known it would be shut down like the rest of France.

So I went a different way; I went to Germany and up through Scandinavia.  Eventually, I came back to France, and everything seemed to be pretty much back to normal.  Gendarmes were directing traffic at intersections, just as they always had.  It was like nothing had happened  The massive, nationwide strike, shutdown, whatever it was, was over.  Gone.

On some streets, artists were vending posters with revolutionary slogans.  That was all.  As before, it was useless to ask my friend.  ”You can see for yourself,” he would have said.

Later I learned the tragedy of what had happened.  The nation-wide strike I’d witnessed had been more than a protest; it had been a bid for change, in effect, a revolution, that failed because the very large French Communist Party, which controlled the unions and dominated the left, had taken over the strike and sent the workers back to work.

The May rebellion took place more than forty years ago, but the story of what happened in France was enough to make me eternally suspicious of the establishment left–whether it’s the allegedly radical Communist Party, or the supposedly progressive wing of the Democratic Party.  Others seem to feel the same way today.  When Occupy Wall Street came into existence last September, activists carefully steered clear of the Democratic Party, the party which has offered so much hope and delivered so much disappointment.  And so Occupy has established itself outside of our broken political system, and this has been key to its instant traction and phenomenal growth as a movement about occupying public space, buildings, and our imaginations.

Vive la France?  Vive l’Amérique?  Mais non! Vive Occupy!  Vive le monde!

There have been a number of books written about this underground press. The granddaddy of them all is most certainly Uncovering the Sixties: The Life and Times of the Underground Press by retired Northwestern University professor Abe Peck, who began his journalism career as a member of Chicago’s groundbreaking Seed. More recent endeavors include John McMillan’s Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America and the just-released On the Ground: An Illustrated Anecdotal History of the Sixties Underground Press in the U.S. Edited by Sean Stewart, On the Ground is essentially an oral history that features the recollections of several people that were involved with underground papers from around the United States. Unlike McMillan’s work which runs toward the academic side of things, Stewart’s text has a populist feel to it. The recollections are straight from the speakers’ mouths; sometimes angry, sometimes humorous and always honest.

The best part of the book are the graphics. As I read through the memories of the folks Stewart spoke with for On the Ground I was repeatedly surprised at how well I remembered various illustrations and photographs Stewart reprinted throughout the text. Like the papers his interviewees are remembering, the most striking thing about On the Ground is the layout. Even though I know the book was composed on a computer screen, the book looks as if it were laid out via the old cut and paste method by folks possibly stoned on weed and a day or two with minimal sleep–just like many issues of almost every paper Stewart discusses.

Being in the Movement and the counterculture was generally an upbeat experience. So was being in the Sixties underground media. Most folks were young and full of hope and those that were not necessarily young in years were where it counted–in their approach to life. Reporters did not cover stories as much as they took part in them and then wrote about it afterward. As Abe Peck says about working at The Seed: “We were very determined and unless something terrible happened–like [the murder of] Fred Hampton–up, just pretty upbeat.” Politics was omnipresent, whether it was at a very political paper like The Black Panther or a paper that had a more countercultural bent like The LA Free Press. This was because, as far as the authorities were concerned, everyone involved with the underground press–writers, printers, cartoonists, sellers and readers–were on the wrong side of the law and had to be watched. Sometimes, they were dealt with by methods legal and otherwise. This meant things like the stores selling papers being harassed by police and vigilantes; the withdrawal of advertising because of pressure from the FBI and other agencies; and assaults against persons involved by cops and others.

When Richard Nixon took over the White House in 1969 the repression of the Movement and counterculture intensified. Naturally, this meant that the media that represented these phenomena would be under greater attack. Black Panther papers were destroyed enroute to cities across the country and even to military bases overseas. Storefronts that newspapers worked out of were firebombed by vigilantes and shot at by police. Obscenity charges were brought against newspapers that then tied up the papers’ funds in court costs. High school underground press writers were thrown out of school and administrators suspended students selling and reading those papers. Although the reasons given for the expulsions usually had to do with attendance and other disciplinary infractions, the reality was that high school disciplinarians resented the threat to their authority and power. A friend of mine in Montgomery County, Maryland was suspended from the progressive John F. Kennedy High School for selling The Washington Free Press on campus. The issue in question featured a cartoon of a judge that had been involved in efforts to shut down the paper. The drawing showed the judge masturbating. Underneath the drawing was the phrase (made popular by the TV show Laugh-In) “here com da judge.” The cartoon was a response to a series of rulings made by the judge forbidding the distribution of the Free Press on high school grounds. These rulings and the school board decisions that preceded them were being challenged by the ACLU.

As the 1960s turned over into the 1970s, many folks that had been on the front lines began to retreat for the sake of their sanity. Others just fell into the trap of individualism and self-satisfaction–an easy trap to fall into in the US of A. By 1974 or thereabouts, the curse of identity politics had taken over much of the political discourse on the left and effectively limited the reach of the Movement as people separated according to their gender, sexuality, and ethnic origins. Intentionally or not, this trend hastened the demise of the underground press and the movements it was a part of. However, its legacy remains. There are many websites and even some print journals that are more than observers of the protests and movements they report on. Journalist Alice Embree notes that “The underground press was the connective tissue; it spread the news …” When the papers began to fail, the connectiveness was lessened. The underground press was a vital part of what happened in the sixties. Sean Stewart’s wonderfully edited text On the Ground lets the reader know how and why that remains true. The striking graphics and compelling recollections in this text are at once a popular history and an inspiration.

For Germany (and her American ally) the Euro-zone is ‘too big to fail.’ And since the European Union lacks a mechanism like the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, only Germany is in a position to underwrite the necessary major bailout. This is a financial gamble of historic proportions, and it comes at a political price: German hegemony in Europe.

Bismarck Makes Germany a Great Power

Paul Kennedy’s classic The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1987) classifies Germany as the hegemonic (or would-be hegemonic) military-industrial power in Europe from the year 1870. That was when Bismarck, the ‘Blood and Iron’ Chancellor of Prussia, tricked the French Emperor Napoleon III into hastily starting a war that Prussia had long been preparing for. After a stunning defeat (Napoleon was take prisoner when the Prussians surrounded the main French army), Bismarck crowned his somewhat reluctant feudal sovereign as Kaiser Wilhelm I, ruling a vastly expanded, united German Reich (including two captured French provinces and most of the Southern German-speaking states) from his own capital, Berlin.

By the end of the 19th Century, efficient, scientifically-organized German industry was challenging Britain’s outdated industrial plant for economic supremacy. Meanwhile, Prussian militarism, supported by this industrial and financial expansion, prepared for future political hegemony and territorial expansion. During the 20th Century, two drawn-out mechanized World Wars were required to prevent the German Reich from transforming her industrial and financial power into imperial domination of the Continent. The main factors that prevented capitalist Germany’s ‘natural’ ascendancy to European hegemony were military: 1) Geography. Situated in the center of Europe between the vast Russian Empire and her ally the French Republic (still a major military power), Germany was obliged to fight on at least two fronts in both 1914 and 1940, as well as at sea against the formidable British Navy; 2) the rise of a new, and vastly richer military-industrial power, the United States, allied with France and Britain.

Defeated, Divided and Demilitarized, Germany Rebounds

In 1945, the demilitarization and division into East and West of post-WWII Germany was designed to prevent yet another attempt at hegemony, but by 1960 (the year I bought my first VW !) West Germany’s industrial plant had risen from the ruins, modernized and become competitive with U.S. industry. Moreover, demilitarization freed up huge amounts of German capital, whereas Germany’s conquerors, the U.S. and the USSR, were draining their economies in a costly arms race. Moreover, West Germany found unlikely support from an ex-enemy — Charles de Gaulle of France –who forged a close alliance with Chancellor Adenauer, while carrying out a foreign policy independent of the U.S., during the Cold War. By the 1970’s, West German leader Willi Brandt dared to break the ice of the Cold War with his independent Ostpolitik, opening up lucrative German trade with her Warsaw Pact neighbors. Today, Germany and Russia are staunch allies and trading partners to the point where Immanuel Wallerstein talks of a Paris-Berlin-Moscow Axis.

United Germany’s Great Gamble

When the Soviet Empire collapsed and the two Germany’s were reunited in 1990, far-seeing West German capital took the risk of investing huge amounts in integrating and modernizing the impoverished East. The West German investors’ bet paid off — so successfully that a former East German, Angela Merkel, is now ruling a populous, rich, and powerful united Germany, where she presides over the Berlin Chancellery established at by Bismarck back in 1871.

Chancellor Merkel, like Bismarck a Conservative, has dragged her centrist coalition, uniting all factions of German capitalism, into another daring bet. The terms? Bail out the Euro zone and end up owning it: achieve hegemonic power, without militarism. Using diplomacy and ‘soft’ power, the Chancellor will now collect the debts that the Greeks and Italians owe the Frankfort bankers as effectively as the U.S. Marines collected the Central American debts for the N.Y. bankers a century ago. Only, instead of sending gunboats, Merkel has used canny diplomacy and financial clout to engineer the fall of Papandreou and Berlesconi, Europe’s two longest-serving and popular Prime Ministers. (Papandreou was brave enough to call her bluff and announce a popular referendum on the Euro at the Nice summit, but then he shamefacedly backed down). That crafty manipulator Bismarck (who after 1870 actually preferred diplomacy to war) would have been proud of his disciple.

Two Bloodless Beheadings

The deposed Greek and Italian heads of government have now been replaced by ‘technocrats’ subservient to the German-dominated European Union Central Bank. The Chancellor has just dispatched teams of German bankers to ‘advise’ them, much as U.S. Embassy staff ‘advised’ the Mexicans and Nicaraguans: pay up or else! The advisors are there to make sure that the technocratic puppet regimes carry out the most stringent austerity measures and force the Greek and Italian working people to pay the debts previously contracted by their own bankers and rulers. This may not prove to be easy.

Meanwhile, the future implications of Merkel’s historic ‘beheading’ of two European heads of state may be as far reaching in their own way as the double beheading in Tunisia and Egypt. To begin with, Germany’s de facto imposition of these super-national ‘receivership’ regimes means an end to democracy and national sovereignty for Greece and Italy. Ancient Europe’s two historical Great Powers, the fountains of European civilization, the cradles of democracy and of the rule of law, are henceforth vassals states under the regency of German and North European banking capital.

From an international perspective, Merkel’s diplomacy and soft power have succeeded in dominating two countries where Hitler’s hoards came a cropper. As for Germany’s once-vulnerable Eastern front, Wallerstein’s Paris-Berlin-Moscow Axis has literally been sealed in concrete with the recent innauguration of the Nordstream pipeline, which will provide Germany with an endless supply of cheap Russian gas and a bottomless market for Mercedes and VWs. And this time around, the U.S., whose precarious finances also depend on the stability of the Euro, will have to support Germany, even if this means reinforcing a rival German-dominated European economy more powerful and productive than the declining American economy. Merkel’s Bismarckian diplomacy has thus succeeded in removing the three principal historical obstacles to German economic-military hegemony: 1) the geographical necessity for a Central European Power to fight a two-front war; 2) the unmatched military and economic power of the United States; 3) inadequate access to modern petroleum-based fuels.

New Possibilities for Struggle?

From the perspective of the European class struggle, this new situation creates new possibilties. For over a year now, the Greek youth and working classes have been striking and rioting against being forced to ‘pay for their crisis’, and now the Italians, with a long history of self-organization, will be called upon to defend their interests as well. These inevitable struggles will take place in the revolutionary atmosphere initiated in the Arab Spring and now gone global with the Occupy Wall Street movement of the 99%-ers. No more illusions about capitalism’s ‘trickle-down’ effect. Moreover, the new technocratic rulers of Greece and Italy and their bean-counting German advisors will be hard put to cope politically with rebellious populations who will see themselves as debt-slaves to the creditor German banks. It would take a showman like Berlesconi or a populist ‘Socialist’ like Papandreou to continue to bambozzle the masses into acquiesance, and now they are gone.

In this new situation in Greece and Italy, one can expect both a rise of national resentments and splits in the national bourgeoisie between ‘Europeans’ and local business interests (tourism, export industries) who may support the working classes, perhaps demanding exit from the Euro so as to devaluate their currencies and become competitive again. If national resentment doesn’t turn into Chavinism and if the bourgeois allies fail to dominate the popular front with the 99%, these developments may open up new prospects for struggle. The key factor will be internationalism. Only if the Greek and Italian working classes are able to unite (and draw in the Spanish, Irish and other European workers) will they escape from debt-slavery to the German-dominated European banks.

Up to now, the European labor unions and the Left parties (Communists and Socialists) have succeeded in confining class conflicts within their national borders, while limiting resistance to ritual one-day ‘general strikes,’ and channeling discontent into local and national elections. (Of course elections are now superfluous under appointed receivership governments responsible to a European super-government). Nonetheless, the entrenched, class-collaborationist national labor unions and ‘Left’ parties — although rejected wholesale by Greek youth and the Spanish indigñados — still have a powerful influence in Italy and France. If more spontaneous, self-organized, horizontal movements like the Arab Spring, the indigñados, and the international Occupy Everything movement spread into Old Europe (including Germany), the straightjacket hold of the official Left on European social movements may be broken, releasing new energies and the creation of international solidarity among the 99%.

This solidarity will be needed when the next financial bubble bursts — as it inevitably will — and turns the Great Recession (from which only the 1% have ‘recovered’) into a globalized Second Great Depression.

Recently, Dictionary.com featured a question: “Why is it called America, not Columbusia?”:

But what about America itself? Why aren’t the continents of North and South America called “Columbusia” after Christopher Columbus? The word America comes from a lesser-known navigator and explorer, Amerigo Vespucci.¹

Maybe Vespucci is the source for the naming of the western hemisphere, but it is disputed by others. The historian and sailor Samuel Morison was sure the hemisphere’s continents are named after Welshman Richard Amerike, the man who financed John Cabot’s westward voyage in 1497.²

BBC History wrote, “… it is also probable that, as the chief sponsor of the Matthew’s voyage, and with Cabot’s wife and children then living, at his instigation, in a house belonging to a close friend, Amerike sought reward for his patronage by asking that any new-found lands should be named after him.”³

A weeks ago, I read a grade 10 Social Studies test. On it was a question: “Who discovered Vancouver Island?” The multiple-choice question offered the names of five Europeans. Even if the question had been posed as “Which non-Indigenous explorer first reached an island later to become named Vancouver Island?,” all five proposed names were wrong. It was a terribly worded and trivial question. People who are not blinkered by ethnocentrism today realize that it is incorrect to depict a place where human beings already reside as being discovered by human beings from another ethnic group.

Can it therefore be morally correct to append a colonial designation upon the land inhabited by another people without their consent?

Three major First Nations reside on Vancouver Island (immodestly named Quadra and Vancouver Island by seafarers Bodega y Quadra and George Vancouver): Nuu-chah-nulth, Kwakwaka’wakw, and Coast Salish. I have never been able to determine an Indigenous designation for the island. These nations each reside in their own section of the largest island on the west coast of Turtle Island.

Turning to the northern continent, how then should one refer to the landmass in deference to the Original Peoples? The eastern nations of the Haudenosaunee and Anishnabek both refer to the continent as Turtle Island – a name derived from folklore.

One Indigenous website, Mexica Uprising!, urges Indigenous peoples to “rise up against the illegal settler population whom continue to enslave us socially, economically, politically and spiritually.”⁴ It proffers another name for the landmasses of the western hemisphere.

The website complains, “Latin America is named after the White people of Latin descent who stole our land and claimed it as their own. The Europeans brand everything they ‘own’ with their name, it is no different with our land.” The proper name in Nahuatl is given as Ixachilan – “one mass of land united by the Eagle and Condor not two seperate [sic] continents.”

Mexica Uprising! implores Indigenous peoples, “It is time to de-colonize our minds and think as individuals. Don’t let the wasicu control your destiny, learn your true history and culture!”

Is de-colonization just meant for the minds of the colonized? Is it not about time for those who have profited from the actions of colonialist ancestors to reorient their thinking along a different moral path — a path that acknowledges and rejects past crimes against humanity and seeks to atone for past crimes, not committed by themselves, but from which they profit in some sense?

Or is aggressive Martian morality acceptable?

1. the hot word, “Why is it called America, not Columbusia?” Dictionary.com, 9 October 2011.
2. Samuel Eliot Morison, The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages, Oxford University Press, New York, 1971.
3. Peter MacDonald, “The Naming of America,” BBC History. Last updated 29 March 2011.
4. “Welcome to Mexica Uprising!” Mexica Uprising.

… once in a lifetime/ the longed for tidal wave/ of justice can rise up…
So hope for a great sea-change…
Believe in miracles…

– Irish Nobel Prize laureate Seamus Heaney, from the poem “The Cure”

The miraculous and magical rise of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) tidal wave has suspended us in a threshold between a no-longer and a not-yet. The call for justice initiated by American youth echoes around the globe. Ours is a time of transition; exploring similar transitional moments in history could be instructive.

I recently watched the acclaimed fictionalized film Battle of Seattle with a 22-year-old who has been at Occupy Santa Rosa numerous times, here in Sonoma County, Northern California. The film evoked memories from the l968 Chicago National Democratic Convention, where I was in the streets and then briefly in jail. I was not in Seattle for the 1999 actions against the international gathering of the World Trade Organization, though I followed them in the media. By studying those two historical events, we can apply lessons from them to today’s rapidly unfolding national and global OWS movement.

What might their differences and similarities be and how can we avoid the problems of those previous events and harvest wisdom from them? All three have been mass mobilizations that dramatically changed history. They are each a battle for better futures that are possible.

I began visiting Occupy Santa Rosa on Oct. 15, when some 3000 energized people gathered outside City Hall and went on a march through downtown. Though Santa Rosa is a medium-sized city of some 165,000, our gathering was the sixth largest in the United States at that time.

The differences in the Chicago, Seattle, and Occupy events are numerous, including geographical, chronological, and duration. Chicago and Seattle failed to remain non-violent, for a variety of reasons, thus limiting their successes. Though some Occupy sites have experienced police violence–such as Oakland, New York, and San Francisco—here in Sonoma County and in other sites at least the protestors have tended to remain non-violent. If that peacefulness continues, the movement will grow and include more of the 99 percent.

One similarity in these three eruptions is that they have been mass uprisings of direct democracy challenging the domination of the many by the few. Then the state used its police power to subdue the constitutional First Amendment freedoms of speech and assembly exercised by those seeking justice.

In l968 I participated in activities in Grant Park and elsewhere in Chicago. This was after the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr., during the history-changing l960s. Our peace movement eventually helped force the U.S. military out of the Vietnam War.

At the time I was a 24-year-old graduate student at the University of Chicago.

Seattle

Not having been in Seattle, I do not know how historically accurate Battle in Seattle is. I welcome feedback from those who were there or have studied this four-day event. The film has a ring of truth to it and reminds us how easily something conceived to follow the principles of non-violence as practiced by Gandhi, King, Quakers, and others can be re-directed by a few police agents and violence-promoting activists. If that were to happen in the Occupation movement, it would loose much of the support that it currently has. Its potential to gain more support among the 99 percent would be limited.

“I was thrilled and grateful to see the next generation picking up the mantle of activism,” said Angela Ford, a Seattle resident in 1999. “I knew that nothing would be the same in the country. At last, the issues of global corporate greed and plunder had surfaced here in the United States. It could no longer be ignored. It became part of public conversation.”

While watching Battle in Seattle, I thought about how unintended consequences can be numerous and far-reaching. Some people will get hurt. A pregnant wife of a police officer played by Woody Harrelson was accidentally caught up in a police attack on demonstrators and hit in the stomach by a policeman. She lost her beloved child.

Two of the strongest scenes in the film involve that policeman and one of the activist leaders. The policeman chases the young man and beats him without mercy, as revenge for his child’s death, until another policeman pulls him off. He later goes to the jail to apologize. “I don’t blame you,” the activist says, facing a third strike and life in prison. He stays on the high ground. His target is the WTO, not the police.

“If you don’t stand up and fight, everything that is beautiful will be taken away,” one of the women jailed in the Seattle film says to her partner, both of them bleeding from the police brutality.

The final scene in the film is inspiring; the activists are released from prison without charges. This happened to me when I was released from Cook County Jail in Chicago after my participation in the 1968 activities. A judge in Nashville, Tennessee, recently released occupiers illegally incarcerated by the police there.

People whose memories include Chicago’68 and Seattle’99 have been active in Occupy 2011, raising questions and concerns. A big difference between the current Occupy movement and the other two historical movements is that OWS occurs not only in one city but is national and increasingly global. It is also ongoing, rather than limited to a short time. All three have been youth-led.

At first the U.S. corporate press ignored OWS, even as the world press was covering it. Then they tried to ridicule it and reduce it with demeaning descriptions, such as “dirty hippies.” They are finally being forced to give it more balanced coverage, though they continue to fail in the responsibility of the media to offer context and analysis.

Santa Rosa

“Once the tents went up,” said Santa Rosa occupier Heather Williamson, 22, “it became more of a community and at times even a party feeling.” Encampments have also been described as evolving into villages that occupy public space. Others describe them as “learning communities of direct democracy.” People can learn how to disagree without being disagreeable and how to deal with their anger appropriately, as well as how to manage conflict and let things go. An historical example of such encampments might be during the Great Depression, when so many people were homeless, as they are today.

Among the many things that OWS does is to function as a school. One can learn the following: peer leadership, communication, setting boundaries, dealing with opponents not as enemies, building trust and relationships, living together with diverse people, developing self-confidence and one’s own voice, letting things go, dealing with difficult people, self-policing, speaking publicly, remaining calm, developing a sense of group identity and unity. OWS provides a public space within which people can have various kinds of encounters with each other.

“My voice is coming out easier,” explained Williamson, who is visiting Sonoma County from San Diego. “I’m learning to speak loud enough.” She and others attend classes and workshops on things such as non-violence, yoga, and how to interact with the police.

A sleeping giant, the so-called “Me Generation” or “Millennial Generation,” which I reached in college, seems to be awakening. Many are passive in class and some feel hopeless about their futures with substantial college debts, few jobs, and often having to move back home.

“This ain’t over yet,” wrote one 71-year-old friend on Oct. 30, as the Occupy Santa Rosa General Assembly decided to continue staying overnight, in spite of the threat of police eviction.

“Santa Rosa has the potential to be an early role model for other communities across the country,” he adds, “where the climate is right for the local governments and the Occupiers to find common ground and to energize many people in these communities to get involved. If this movement is going to be successful, it needs many people marching, making democratic decisions in General Assemblies, and taking action.” He later notes, “Democracy is never perfect, but we need to get as close to it as we can.”

He then concludes with some insights from depth psychology: “There is the wisdom of the elders who may advise against rash actions, but there is the wisdom of the youth that can carry the ball forward to new ground. Hopefully, the elder energy can check the reckless Puer Aeternus (eternal youth) energy and the youthful energy can check the stuck elder Senex ( cynical) energy. We need a full-throated debate about these important issues so that all of these energies can find a proper balance. Step by step we must discover how to refine the Occupy democratic process.”

Seattle apparently had conflicts among elected officials, like between its mayor and the governor of Washington, and between electeds and the police chief. Such conflicts have happened in the San Francisco Bay Area. Occupations here have received significant support from San Francisco supervisors, some of whom have attended, as well as support from other elected officials and politically powerful people. If the Occupation movement can develop further allies from members of labor unions, faith and community groups, and others, this will serve it well.

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan was once an activist herself, but she authorized what became the most vicious police riot against occupiers to date, seriously wounding an Iraq Marine veteran, Scott Olsen. Her former allies are calling on her to resign and her authority has eroded.

“Creating confrontations with supporters is a tactical and strategic mistake,” said former Sebastopol mayor Larry Robinson at a recent meeting. “Most everyone here in local government gets it. What the occupiers do is bear witness to the injustices and moral issues. The concentration of wealth and income distribution is morally wrong. It is leading to the downfall of what could be a great civilization. We should not alienate natural allies, which includes local businesses.” Robinson added that it is important not to demonize Santa Rosa and local government, but to keep the focus on Wall Street.

“From Arab Spring and the Occupy movement we need to learn that we cannot predict when things will open,” Robinson said. “There is a tipping point, and we need to be prepared for that opening.” He has been studying chaos theory and speaking to groups about it and the importance of accepting uncertainty.

Police weapons since Seattle’99 have evolved and gotten more violent, as revealed by the some 400 policemen from 17 precincts that were mobilized and used helicopters, armored vehicles, and shotguns firing projectiles against a much smaller, unarmed citizenry. Tactics used by the police in the film “Battle in Seattle” are currently being used or may soon be used against the occupations, including martial law, police infiltrators, declaring States of Emergency and curfews, and sending in the National Guard, some of whom will have been in combat in Iraq and/or Afghanistan.

America has become more violent since Chicago’68 and Seattle’99. As its morality has declined, its firepower has increased. Let’s not be naïve and innocent, especially given the enthusiasm of the youth, which has already been dashed by President Barak Obama becoming a manager of the wealthy 1 per cent.

As someone who lived in Chile during the democratically-elected government of President Salvador Allende in the early l970s, I experienced how quickly a country can go from having hundreds of thousands of people mobilized in the streets to a brutal dictatorship. In Chile I first heard the chant “The people united will never be defeated. (El pueble unido jamas sera vencido.) It was good to hear it again in the Seattle film and now at OWS occupations around the world, thus linking them to Chile.

Since Chicago’68 and Seattle’99 the gap between the rich and the poor in the U.S. has risen. Though the U.S. military has expanded its reach—with a budget about the same size as all the rest of the militaries in the world combined—U.S. power and prestige have declined with the rise of the rest, especially China, India, Russia, and Brazil. American power is possible only because of its world-wide fortress.

The Occupy movement could either stimulate a growth of more oppressive control of the 99 per cent by the 1 percent or a weakening or even overthrow of the Wall Street stranglehold. The rich and their protectors are certainly carefully calculating how to turn back the Occupy tide and continue exploiting the labor of the rest of us and the Earth’s bounty.

Chicago’68 was a turning point. Seattle’99 was a turning point. Now Occupy’11 continues that legacy of a mass uprising of democracy. If Occupy continues to grow, it has the potential to recall the U.S. back to some of its original democratic values of freedom, liberty, and justice for all.

There are those who are trying to set fire to the world.
We are in danger.
There is time only to work slowly.
There is no time now to love.

– Deena Metzger

During this period, what arose was a romanticism for nature (hence, perhaps, the popularity of evolutionary theory at that time), and the belief that, if only man could be freed of the corruption of society and its contrived conventions—of the state, of the clergy and, for some, of matrimony and of private property—then man, therefore, would be poised to achieve heights undreamed of hitherto.

It was these conditions which gave rise to the French Revolution, which, ironically, came to depend on the keystone mechanism of the State—violence—and gave way to a period during which France conquered swathes of Western Civilization. Still, from 1770 until 1914, many have argued that a culture of staunch self-reliance generally attitudinized Western Civilization, sometimes summarized by the concept of laissez-faire.

Much of this self-reliance held that, if society is evil, then the State—which is merely the organized vertical force of society—is doubly evil. If man is innately good, then he ought to be completely freed from this coercive power of the State. Indeed, nineteenth century Liberalism believed man should be freed from all coercive power, among which might be included the church, army and other institutions. Society, in this case, would have little power other than the power required to restrain the strong from oppressing the weak.

The idea of a “community of interests” was also very strong during this period. This “community of interests” was a realm in which what was good for one was good for all. Somewhere, according to this belief, there did exist a reality where everybody would be secure, free, and prosperous, and that this pattern could be achieved over time. In it, each person could fall into that place in society best suited to his abilities. Implicit in this belief was that human ability is innate and can only be suppressed or altered by social discipline and that each individual is the best judge of his own self-interest.

In 1880, the belief that the current generation, and indeed all generations, was the culmination of a long process of history. Oftentimes, this long process is referred to as progress, a phenomenon that had lasted millennia and would continue forevermore. This belief ran so deep that progress, by many, was seen as inevitable and automatic.

These nineteenth century epistemes have, in the twentieth century, been considerably modified—or so it would seem at first glance. Wherefore such a change? Four traumatic decades at the onset of the twentieth century, and five decades of intense militarism by two premier Empires, led to a perceivable sea change in the disposition of men. Included in these shattering experiences are the First World War, world depression, world financial crisis, and the Second World War. These were then followed by the Cold War.

On the byway of these traumas, major adjustments were made in the western brain. Men now had viable reason to doubt their entrenched belief in the innate goodness of man. Evil was no longer merely the absence of good.

In the course of these events, millions were killed and billions of dollars wasted. Impossible to comprehend for most, such a blow altered man’s disposition on their own species. The First World War was seen as an aberration—and one from which they must quickly move on and forget.

For ten years a façade was created, a lie. In 1929, the stock market crashed. World depression ensued, and was followed by financial crisis. In the late thirties, sabers rattled as rearmament and aggression.

After 1945, a new world was evident. Opposed with the nineteenth century view of man as innately good and society as corrupting, increasingly the belief that man had a seemingly infinite capacity for untold evil insinuated itself into the minds of men. Without a society—that is, large institutions designed to quell man’s beastly desires, to nudge them towards desired beliefs and behaviors—man would certainly destroy himself. Efforts hinting at such a belief can be seen in the attempted erection of the League of Nations after the First World War, and the establishment of the United Nations (UN) after the Second World War.

The former western belief that human philosophies and abilities are innate and should be free from social duress in order to display individuality was replaced by the idea that the personality is a result of social repetition and training and must be coerced to socially acceptable ends. The laissez-faire economics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were to be replaced by social discipline and central planning.

The “community of interests” of the free market would take backseat to the welfare community, which must be organized by wise-men. An intellectual environment would arise friendly to assertions of some sort of “de-evolution” or social retrogression or human extinction. Democracy would now be replaced by authoritarianism, and the laissez-faire Capitalism by State Enterprise or command-and-control.

Now, here in the twenty-first century, it has grown clearer that progress is not a steady force with inevitable outcomes. Rather, man’s social development can be seen as a more anarchic, spontaneous process, no matter how much rulers attempt to ensure things remain predictable. These same notions are increasingly amending Darwin’s theory of evolution, or progress, towards more perfect forms.

The eighteenth and nineteenth century were schizophrenic times, as has been so much of human history. Nationalistic tendencies undermined royal empires, and out of this flux came a vibrant forum of idea sharing. Thoughts of a laissez-faire lifestyle wherein individuals were freed from the European caste system led to the mythology of the New World, even if the New World only reflected such a lifestyle pre-Constitution, and scantily so.

A way of understanding that was promoted, if too often implicitly and not explicitly, by eighteenth and nineteenth century sentiments, holds that the natural ought to be esteemed before the political. Even today, too often do our philosophies on how life should be grow politicized, thereby undermining their original power. Humans are not political beings. They are natural beings. The questions of how we should live our lives are unanswerable by politics, for politics is merely a means of ordering life by way of the state or government. The questions of how we should live our lives are answerable only by naturalism; that is, by recognizing that which makes us humans.

Our consciousness blossoms as a beautiful aberration from other life in the natural world as we know it. The cognitive niche, inherited from nature, that we inhabit gives us an axiom from which our understanding of the world stems. This can be easily interrupted and distorted by the data and information we are fed. Whether it be outright war, depression or manipulative fiction on television or in the movies, we are all easily victimized by the campaigning of pathological behavior by the trendsetters; that is, the ruling class—and our peers who follow. They have adopted the cynicism passed down by a century marred by two Great Wars, a deep depression, and a long standoff between two nuclear powers.

The cynicism bequeathed unto us by a violent twentieth century has led us to the belief that we need centralized governments and rulers to keep us from doing violence to one another. But what we see are large institutions, instead of keeping people in-line, projecting violence down civilization’s ladder, and turning individuals against themselves, thus creating the precise environment people hoped they would prevent. Indeed, they were all along the impetuses of the bloodletting and carnage people were attempting to escape.

Given its pre-American history, New Orleans has always been more culturally complex than the country that came to contain it. This city knew Creoles, free people of color (“gens de couleur libre”), quadroons and octoroons, while Americans saw things in terms of white and black. The latter’s dichotomous worldview was ultimately thrust upon the pre-existing system of Creole social gradation, thus threatening social instability. Meanwhile, a linguistic element of cultural cleavage was added, as the new occupiers spoke English. They would ultimately move into “uptown” New Orleans, across Canal from the French Quarter.

The Civil War brought yet another occupation: this time the “Yankee.” Historian Christopher Benfey describes the situation as such: “The precarious status of the Creoles – beaten up by the uptown “Americans” before the Civil War, and by the Northern Yankees during and after it – had another, more troubling result, in their increasingly desperate attempts to restore their lost prestige.”¹ This troubling result was the 1874 “Battle of Liberty Place,” in which the Crescent City White League fought the Metropolitan police, resulting in 30 deaths, over frustration regarding the perceived opportunism of northern politicians and their implementation of the corrupt elections of 1872 (which briefly resulted in an African-American governor.)

In sum, northern efforts at reconstruction exacerbated racial tensions rather than tempering them. The Yankee, like the American occupier before, introduced a more restrictive system of race relations than had previously existed. Historian John Blassingame explains: “Because of their historical intimacy with Negroes, most Louisiana whites manifested far less abhorrence for blacks than did their brothers in the North and far less than their rhetoric often implied.”² This rhetoric, as represented by the White League and other racist organs, was the result of Creole frustration and desperation. The violence of Liberty Place, meanwhile, was born of resentment over another wave of occupation.

The Creoles and their language gradually lost their footing in New Orleans, though the era of northern occupation did not cease with the end of the Civil War. As Josh and Rebecca Tickell elegantly demonstrate in their recently released documentary The Big Fix, the state of Louisiana thereafter became a colony of northern oligarchs, eager to cash in on the state’s natural resources, particularly the oil. While last year’s Deepwater Horizon accident brought global attention to the immediate ecological risks associated with the plunder of this resource in an increasingly unregulated environment, Louisianans have long felt the social and economic consequences thereof (not to mention the long-term ecological consequences wrought via the depletion of the wetlands). The two principal oil companies present in the first decades of the last century were Standard Oil and Texaco: the latter almost as northern as the former, insofar as most of its financial backing came from investors up north. Nonetheless, it was Standard Oil that would come to wield mammoth control over the industry, even after its breakup in 1911 under the Sherman anti-trust law. One result of their unparalleled economic influence and power was, naturally, near monopolistic control of political power in Louisiana.

This was until the political consciousness of Louisiana discovered a means of counter-occupation, in the form of the redoubtable Huey Long. As the social implications of the preceding era of monopoly capitalism began to take hold in the form of economic malaise, Long was swept into the governor’s mansion in 1928 on a populist platform that included loosening the stranglehold of Standard Oil on Louisiana’s political system. Other elements to his populist agenda included vast expenditures on public works projects such as roads, bridges and schools, and, famously, the provision of free textbooks for schoolchildren. In order to help pay for these programs, he introduced a tax on the oil refineries. For his efforts, he was rewarded with an impeachment attempt in 1929, which ultimately failed. Meanwhile, Standard Oil attempted to withhold payment of their obligations under the new tax, thus provoking Long to send in the National Guard to seize their oil fields until payment was made.

In speech, the “King Fish” echoed the sentiments of today’s populist movement. On the two political parties of his day: “They’ve got a set of Republican waiters on one side and a set of Democratic waiters on the other side, but no matter which set of waiters brings you the dish, the legislative grub is all prepared in the same Wall Street kitchen.” At the time, northern progressives treated him disparagingly, as his plain-talking southern demeanor repelled their bourgeois sensibilities. This runs parallel to the similar treatment now given by “liberal” commentators to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Nonetheless, he was the first to admit to not being an intellectual, and his rhetoric is just as relevant today. On the imbalance of wealth:

According to the tables which we have assembled, it is our estimate that 4 percent of the American people own 85 percent of the wealth of America, and that over 70 percent of the people of America don’t own enough to pay for the debts that they owe.

Any man with a thimble-full of sense ought to know that if you take 85 percent off of that table and give it to one man that you are bound to have 2/3 the people starving because they haven’t got enough to eat.

How many men ever went to a barbecue and would let one man take off the table what’s intended for 9/10th of the people to eat? The only way to be able to feed the balance of the people is to make that man come back and bring back some of that grub that he ain’t got no business with!

Long was assassinated on September 8th, 1935, and politics in Louisiana quickly reverted to the usual Wall Street fare. This was probably most notable in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when the natural disaster was used as cover for the implementation of a radical neo-liberal agenda in devastated New Orleans. As in other major cities driven by a reactionary austerity agenda, this commenced with deconstruction of a majority of the city’s public housing units, including St. Bernard, C.J. Peete, B.W. Cooper, and Lafitte. One couldn’t imagine a more opportune time to close down housing units than when they are vacant. With public housing went the historic Charity hospital, a public hospital and historic New Orleans fixture. The disrepair of these facilities after the storm provided a convenient pretense for the political class of the state and city to enact a private take-over that their major funders had always dreamt of.

The most striking privatization, meanwhile, has come in the realm of education. While the entirety of the system was vacated in the weeks following the storm, the Emergency Session of the Louisiana legislature used the occasion to pass Act 35, which put the vast majority of the city’s public schools in state hands, under the auspices of the “Recovery School District” (RSD). The RSD existed prior to the hurricane as a mechanism to bring schools deemed as “failing” under state supervision. However, Act 35 changed the guidelines by which a school was deemed “failing,” so that any school below the state average was grabbed. In all, 102 of the city’s schools were transferred to the RSD (bringing the total to 107). Once in the hands of state bureaucracy, the process of transferring the schools to charters was made easier, as the Republican-led state government had long since begun the school charterization/privatization process across the state.

The city is now the nation’s only charter-majority system, with 61 of the 88 open schools being run by state or parish sanctioned charters. The Orleans Parish School Board only directly operates six schools, while the RSD operates 33. To help administer this transformation, the RSD hired Paul Vallas as superintendant in 2007. He had previously proved his worth by commencing the charterization process in Chicago while this author attended school there. At the end of his tenure in 2010, he candidly discussed the impact that charters have had on the composition of the workforce at the city’s schools: “I submit to you that part of the problem in education is, there is not enough turnover. I’m very comfortable. I’m running a district where half of my teachers are the university elites and the college elites from programs like Teach For America, and the other half of my teachers veteran teachers. I think there’s a very healthy balance.”

Indeed, one of the principle objectives of charter school proponents is weakening teachers’ unions. Nowhere is this more vivid than New Orleans, where the United Teachers of New Orleans was essentially busted by this regressive state school grab. Membership in the union prior to the storm stood at about 7,500, and has only recently re-grown to 1,000. As Vallas alludes to in the quote above, the charters have lent more heavily on Teach for America and similar programs designed to bring in recent graduates with no teaching experience. While most of these young people are well-intentioned, their role is effectively that of a scab. Furthermore, there are racial undertones to this union busting, as the UNTO has always been predominantly African-American. Inner-city teachers have long composed an intrinsic part of the black middle class in this country. One source of the recent implosion of that demographic has been the attack on urban teachers’ unions with this widespread politics of “austerity” and privatization. In short, school privatization is one of the principal routes to gentrification, insofar as it functionally replaces large swathes of middle-class black workers with young, predominantly white workers.

From the French imperialists to the neo-liberal capitalists, New Orleans history has been replete with top-down occupations. Meanwhile, its unique cultural dynamism has produced significant counter-occupiers: those that have reclaimed the humanity of the city by producing an unparalleled music tradition. The African-American population that has endured slavery, servitude, political repression and socio-economic persecution has given this country its popular music. By maintaining occupation of the human spirit in spite of the nation-wide encroachment by unfettered capitalism, New Orleans has maintained its status as a rare refuge of creative ingenuity in the Empire.

As part of the vibrant social movement that has sprung up in cities across the country, Occupy NOLA has set up camp in Duncan Plaza. One of the first significant decisions of their General Assembly was to rename said plaza after Avery Alexander, a local civil rights activist who was integral in efforts to resist segregation in the 1960’s by organizing boycotts, sit-ins and marches. They have taken public space bearing the title of a politician from a locally influential family and reclaimed it for the counter-occupiers, the activists, those who recognize the human propensity to enact meaningful social and political change, and those unwilling to accept the narrative of the exploiters in our midst.

Meanwhile, they have eschewed adopting leaders and introducing hierarchy. The movement of the 99% is meant to surpass human limitations. Huey Long was killed and his counter-occupation dissipated immediately thereafter. A superior model of counter-occupation is offered in the city’s music, which endures beyond the death of any single artist. The jazz funeral provides the opportunity to celebrate life while mourning, by appropriately marching from the burial site in a festive and musically-driven march. It recognizes the cultural contribution of the fallen and immediately demonstrates the spirit that carries on.

This movement has already endured over a month: monumental for an encampment in 21st century America. It has also made its mark by addressing political issues marked as taboo by the two corporatist political parties. It has re-occupied a realm of restricted discourse, and promises that “it is not leaving.” As such, it should only be a matter of time before it re-occupies our schools, hospitals, public housing, natural resources, banks and financial institutions. We are finally making the 1% come back with “some of that grub that (it) ain’t got no business with.”

1. Benfey, Christopher. Degas in New Orleans (University of California Press, 1997) pp. 14-15.
2. Blassingame, John. Black New Orleans, 1860-1880 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), xvi.

An overnight curfew was lifted on Monday but scores of people have been arrested, and a heavy security presence remained on the streets near Tahrir Square (the iconic landmark that witnessed the glorious days of the Egyptian revolution).

Sunday clashes followed Egypt Christians (Copts) protests over the recent destruction of a church near the southern town of Aswan, but actually there was more to these protests than just another case of demolishing or setting a church on fire (this was the third incidence in a row, of demolishing Coptic churches, in less than 8 months after Mubarak was toppled).

Barely a few weeks to the first post-Mubarak parliamentary elections and after months of political debate and turmoil, it has become obvious that the Muslim Brotherhood and the ultra-conservative Islamists (Salafists) are bound to gain the lead in the upcoming vote, thus devouring the biggest chunk of the next parliament seats and tightening their grip over the legislative house.

And since the Islamists front, which obviously struck some sort of a deal with the military, has made no secret of their intention to apply the Islamic Sharia law that could undermine the citizenry of the Copts and reduce them to second class citizens, the Coptic community grew not only insecure but also frightened of the perilous prospects of a gloomy future.

So the thousands of Copts in Sunday’s rally were not expressing their anger over the demolition of yet another church; rather, they were expressing their fears over threatened belonging and identity and over the failure of the interim government to protect them and their places of worship.

Never throughout the 1400 years of co-habitation with Muslims in Egypt had any church or monastery been attacked before.  That’s why this whole new cycle of persecution and discrimination against the Christian minority has been a very alarming precedent for all the Coptic community in Egypt.

What went wrong?

Copts of Egypt are enduring through threatened identity crisis for years now.

Many no doubt wondered what on earth had happened to the celebrated Tahrir revolution of civility, nonviolence and solidarity as they watched the violent late collisions between Egypt Copts and the soldiers of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF).

Disturbing scenes certainly, but they were neither unexpected nor totally spontaneous as some like to portray them. In the historical course of most revolutions, moments of exceptional unity and sacrifice do not last long. Once the common enemy is gone, unity gives way to the reassertion of differences and sectarian interests; old coalitions collapse, new solidarities and ideological differences emerge and even plots and schemes by another enemy begin to play out.

At such times of political instability, the challenge, of course, is how to handle the old demarcations and emerging differences. In post-Mubarak Egypt, the rise of radical Islamists, a security vacuum and sectarian violence have always been the most feared obstacles to a smooth transition to a democratically elected government, whatever that means.

But with SCAF siding with the Islamist front while dragging its feet on getting the police forces back on the Egyptian street and properly functioning again, the Christian minority (10% of the Egyptian population) remains in limbo.

Copts in history

Egyptian Christianity, of course, predates Islam – which was brought by the Arab conquest of Egypt in 639 AD, and became the majority religion. Some Egyptians embraced Islam voluntarily for its promise of justice, many did so to avoid jizya (taxes) while still others to acquire equal social and political status with Muslims.

By the 10th century, Muslims outnumbered the Christian population, and Arabic replaced the Coptic language as the official governmental language. In the 12th century, the church adopted Arabic as the official clergical language.

“Like or not, we are the true landowners,” yelled the protesting copts.

Hardline Copts, in exile and at home, consider themselves a distinct ethnicity – with a unique ancestry, religion and way of life – that are now being treated as a second class population and suggest, moreover, that they are, in fact, the “true, original Egyptians.”

With that hardline concept and reasoning in mind that the Copts never dared or allowed, if you will, to take it outside the church premises, the Coptic protesters in their Sunday march defiantly roared, “Like or not, we are the true land owners.”

This was the first time for Egypt Copts to let go of their prudence and discretion and maybe also their long buried hostility.  Frustrated by SCAF lax handling of the violence and frequent targeting of the Coptic churches, and since no one was prosecuted or held accountable for the previous two attacks, the Copts set off this huge rally with a bit of a grudge against SCAF.

Left out

In Egypt today, the key responsibility to ensure sectarian peace lies with the country’s elite (the military council, the intelligentsia, the remnants of Mubarak’s regime, Islamists, and Coptic leaders) … and, of course, regional and international players, namely Saudi Arabia, the United States and Israel.

As for the intelligentsia and the liberals who have being outweighed by the rise of the well organized and obscenely financed Islamists, thanks to the Wahabbist Saudis, and are so busy and exhausted trying to secure, by any stretch, the minimum number of parliament seats even if that meant some secret deal with the Muslim brotherhood, they actually have no time for the Copts’ dossier.

The Coptic leaders, feeling insecure after Mubarak’s stepping down and also feeling left out while the Islamists and the remnants of the old regime split the booty of the transitional period, had no choice but to consider asking, or, rather, begging for international protection, an option long advocated by hardline Copts in exile especially in the United States and aided by Zionist organizations … and that required nothing more than some bloody confrontation with the Egyptian security forces during which Coptic victims would fall down in front of the whole world.

Judging from the latest statements of SCAF in which they explicitly announced that the council will not approve of a civilian president to be the future supreme commander of the military forces and with Field Marshal Tantawy insinuating that he might consider running for the presidency, we can understand SCAF’s need for more escalation of riots and unrest as a pretext to sort of prolonging the interim period for may be another two years during which they could cling to power and shift the country into military rule.

For the time being, both the United States and Israel prefer the military council being in command rather than to hand over the rule of Egypt to the Muslim Brotherhood with their known pro-Palestine agenda and their unpredictable stance on the Camp David peace accords, even if that means turning a blind eye to SCAF security forces getting so out of control as to run over peaceful protesters with their armored vehicles exactly as Mubarak’s security apparatus used to do.

False flag

When it comes to Egypt, the Israeli role doesn’t stop at the wishful thinking of an observer but extends into deep and covert involvement. I mean, we all remember the state of bewilderment and confusion that followed the Alexandria church bombing last Christmas night that left around 20 dead and 90 wounded, but the classified documents found in the headquarters of the raided state security apparatus proved that the whole thing was a false flag operation pulled to implicate some Gaza-based militants and help Israel tighten its siege on Gaza and incriminate Hamas as a terrorist organization.

What is similarly puzzling about the peaceful Coptic march that suddenly turned violent is the testimony of various eyewitnesses that confirmed that plain-clothed unknown assailants managed to infiltrate the rally and on reaching the final destination of the march they were the ones who started throwing stones, Molotov cocktail bottles and even shooting live ammunition at the military security forces taking down two soldiers — and from then on the scene turned into the chaos and violence we have all witnessed.

Obviously those were trained agent provocateurs that easily infiltrated the peaceful Coptic march and orchestrated this whole mess. What consolidates this thesis is the swift and widespread rumor that followed on the internet social media and on the Egyptian street stating that Hillary Clinton, the American foreign secretary, has declared that the United States is willing to help the Egyptian military council to protect the Christian minority in Egypt.

Of course, the next day this breaking news was refuted as false statement, but still this whole thing, regardless of the hidden motives of both the Copts and the Egyptian military, smells so much like a false flag.

Early makes a solid case for democratic unions, ending the book with a call for rank-and-file controlled unions as the superior choice over corporate-style, top-down unions.

The vast majority of workers would agree with Early’s prescription, and in a democratic society, it would be a done deal. However, as with most matters under capitalism, the majority get no choice.

The major weakness of Civil Wars is that it doesn’t explain why a generation of activists failed to democratize the unions and what the next generation of activists must do differently to avoid repeating that failure.

Early does a fine job of explaining who did what to whom in meticulous detail, but he fails to locate these details in an accurate historical context.

Early describes how, after the decline of the social movements in the 1970s,

“…thousands of veterans of anti-war activity, the civil rights movement, feminism, and community organizing migrated to workplaces and union halls with the professed goal of challenging the labor establishment… the largest radical presence in the unions since the 1930s, when members of the Communist Party and other left-wing groups played a key role in the formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).” (p.1-2)

Unfortunately, the 1970s was not the 1930s, and the New Left was not the Communist Party.

The 1930s followed the crash of 1929. The Great Depression created mass deprivation and the economic boom in the Soviet Union gave credibility to communists in the labor movement. The link between the labor movement and the socialist movement was key to the rise of industrial unions in America.

In contrast, the 1970s followed decades of economic expansion that enabled a sizable union bureaucracy to develop. And while the 1960s generation was radicalized by the fight for Civil Rights and the US war in Vietnam, the twin legacies of McCarthy in America and Stalin in the Soviet Union had driven socialists out of the unions and discredited the revolutionary left.

While mass movements won real gains for the working class in the 1960s, the capitalist class regrouped during the 1970s and launched a broad-based class war to regain lost ground. Cut off from the socialist tradition, the New Left was unable to counter the assaults of the capitalist class and the conservatism of the union bureaucracy.

As Early points out, the employers’ offensive was fierce and unrelenting. Companies laid off workers, attacked unions and demanded concessions. Governments of both parties supported this assault by eroding labor standards, deregulating industries, privatizing social services and supporting job migration.

The union bureaucracy was used to a more friendly terrain on which it could negotiate wages and benefits. It recoiled from the prospect of fighting an all-out class war that challenged the right of the capitalists to profit at workers’ expense.

Despite the escalating attacks, union leaders continued to uphold their end of a social contract that no longer existed. They accepted employers’ demands for concessions, no matter how deep, in the hope that once profitability was restored, they would regain lost ground. However, the employers continued to demand concessions, even as the economy boomed and profits soared.

Workers who fought back were fired, and combative unions were decertified. With a few notable exceptions, strikes were defeated, union drives failed and workers became demoralized. The proportion of workers in unions sank into the single digits.

In the face of such defeats, why have union bureaucrats consistently refused to fight? Early provides the usual liberal explanation – that union leaders are simply wedded to the wrong strategy.

A class analysis reveals something different.

The union bureaucracy cannot lead the fight against the employers, not because of wrong-headed ideas, but because the bureaucracy occupies a managerial or middle-class position between capital and labor. Its continued existence depends on the continued exploitation of union members and its role in negotiating the terms of that exploitation. The union bureaucracy cannot challenge capitalism without threatening its own existence, so it must promote conciliation.

The capitalist class understands the true nature of union officialdom. Over the past four decades, employers have relied on the compliance of union leaders to drive down the living standards of the entire working class.

Despite their passivity, union bureaucrats could not allow their membership base to disappear because they need members’ dues to sustain their elevated social position and lavish lifestyles. They couldn’t rally union members to fight the employers without compromising their own middle-class position, so the only other option was to advance themselves at their members’ expense.

To their everlasting discredit, top union officials adopted the capitalist model of turf wars, takeovers and amalgamations. Embracing this ‘compete or die’ strategy, each set of union bureaucrats fought to increase its market share, that is, to grow its own union at the expense of other unions and the labor movement as a whole.

Civil Wars describes in great detail the corruption, back-stabbing, power-grabbing, opportunistic alliances that have marked these turf wars among American unions.

Early explains how the corporate model of organizing was presented as a means to advance workers’ interests (“justice for all”) when it was actually fought at their expense. Millions of dollars in members’ dues and countless union-hours were squandered on lawyers, consultants, politicians, smear campaigns, court battles, settlements, and security forces – not to fight for workers’ rights but to battle other unions and to dominate the rank and file.

The struggle for better contracts, for Medicare-for-all and for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act were all sacrificed to expand the control of high-paid union bureaucrats.

Civil Wars documents how difficult it was to transform unions into power bases for a self-serving bureaucracy. Standing in the way were militant union locals and rank-and-file activists who rely on their unions to defend them at work.

Applying the most disgusting tactics, bureaucrats used members’ dues to finance an attack on any local and any militant who fought for democratic control of their union.

The many were sacrificed to benefit the few. This is the social dynamic of capitalism – a word that does not appear in Early’s book, but is key to any real understanding.

During the Cold War, capitalism severed the link between the cause of labor and the fight for socialism. This link has never been rebuilt, and this explains the sorry state of the US labor movement today.

The tradition of socialism as democratic working-class control was rediscovered too late in the 1960s. When capital launched its war against the working class, the revolutionary left was too small and inexperienced to counter it. With the unions in retreat and the working-class demoralized, the left split.

One segment of the left, to which Early belongs, “went into unions to change the balance of power between labor and capital by first changing power relationships within unions themselves.” (p.16)

The other segment worked to build a base on college campuses in the hope of being able to inject revolutionary politics back into the labor movement when it rose again.

How successful were these strategies?

From the abundance of evidence in Early’s book, we can conclude that the dedication, hard work and personal sacrifice of union activists is an insufficient social force, on its own, to counter the combined power of the capitalist class and the union bureaucracy. Labor militants need the political support of a revolutionary socialist movement.

Sadly, but inevitably, socialist organizations that built a base on campuses became dominated by middle-class academics and professionals who offer abstract, not real, leadership. And they continue to wait for the labor movement to revive.

We can be certain that capital will continue to assault labor, and workers will continue to defend their rights. Whether workers prevail will depend on the extent to which they develop socialist consciousness and socialist organization. When the working class is on the ascendance, this can happen spontaneously. When the class is on the defensive, workers need the intervention of socialists to show them what they are capable of achieving.

Our most urgent task is to reconnect the labor movement with the socialist tradition. For this to happen, labor activists need socialist politics and socialist organizations must reconstitute themselves to place those who lead in the workplace in the leadership of the organization.

Instead of using his knowledge and experience to rebuild the vital link between the cause of labor and the struggle for socialism, Early attacks it. In the final chapter, he promotes the most vulgar anti-Marxism, equating the victory of the workers’ state in Russia under Lenin with its crushing defeat under Stalin.

Like other books that address the state of US labor (Solidarity Divided, Labor in Trouble and Transition), Civil Wars rejects a political solution to the class war in favor of reforming ‘the house of labor.’ As Early documents so well, this strategy has failed in the past. And it will continue to fail because political problems cannot be solved by economic means.

Unions are organizations of economic defense. No matter how well they work together (and their jurisdictional divisions prevent this) unions cannot lead the class because they must represent every worker in the bargaining unit, regardless of those workers’ political views. And capitalism is highly effective in convincing workers to adopt political views that conflict with their class interests.

The two key lessons that flow from Early’s book are ones that he ignores.

The working class must organize separately from other classes, especially from the middle-class union bureaucrats and the middle-class professionals who dominate the social movements. Only by organizing separately can the working class become strong enough to make tactical alliances with other classes.

The working class needs its own independent political party, a revolutionary socialist organization that is dedicated to winning the class war against capital by bringing the working class to power.

I’m on my sailboat in Valetta, Malta, in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, on my way to perform a memorial service for American servicemen killed in action almost 45 years ago.

With Texan crew members Joe and Sherrie Wagner, I’ve sailed 7,000 miles from Galveston. We’re going 1,000 miles more to the exact spot where Israeli forces perpetrated a ruthless, two-hour assault on the USS Liberty, killing 34 and injuring 174.

Israel said it was a “tragic mistake.” The survivors said it was deliberate. Lifeboats were shot up and stretcher-bearers machine-gunned.

The attack occurred in international waters off the coast of Egypt while the Liberty was monitoring communications during Israel’s Six Day War. Most Americans are unaware of that attack because the cover-up began even before the smoke had cleared, the wounded cared for and the dead counted (see ussliberty.com).

The cover-up occurred because President Lyndon Baines Johnson did not want to embarrass Israel, thus alienating the powerful Israel lobby that would then pour money into his opponent’s campaign.

The cover-up continues to this day, which is why I undertook this voyage. I’m planning to commemorate the victims as best I can and to support their shipmates, sons, daughters and widows (most of the mothers and fathers are now gone) in their demand for the investigation that never happened.

Congress never formally investigated the incident because members are intimidated by the pro-Israel lobby. That same lobby is picking up the travel expenses for 81 members of Congress to visit Israel this very month.

Apparently, new members need to be oriented before voting on the appropriation that gives $8 million per day to Israel.

Refusal to participate in the trip would mark a member as unfriendly to Israel and the lobby would work to defeat him or her in their next election.

Texas Congressman Blake Farenthold is among the 81.

Now that we’ve sailed across the Atlantic and halfway across the Mediterranean without any serious problems, there is one more obstacle.

Israel has continued its practice of harassing Americans at sea. Survivors Joe Meadors of Corpus Christi and Jim Ennes, who wrote the first book about the attack, have been communicating with U.S. embassies in Tel Aviv and Cairo, trying to ensure the Israeli navy will leave me alone.

The U.S. gives Israel $3 billion a year, but then must plead with the country not to harass, injure, or kill innocent Americans!

I merely want to exercise my right as an American citizen to proceed to a point in international waters where a grave injustice was perpetrated against U.S. sailors and express my dismay that injustice is being extended by Congress’s timidity.

Members of Congress never miss an opportunity to say to a U.S. service man or woman, “We thank you for your service!”

But their service is not praised if doing so would embarrass the state of Israel, the pro-Israel lobby or diminish campaign contributions.

• Originally appeared in Galveston Daily News.

The visit was organised by the Anglo Israel Association, whose honorary president is the Israeli Ambassador. The Anglo Israel Association boast that their most fruitful work is as propagandists for Israel bringing ‘opinion formers’ to the UK on speaking tours in partnership with British think-tanks and universities to push the Israeli perspective.

Benny Morris is well known for his racist views of Arabs and Muslims, his support and whitewashing of ethnic cleansing and his justification of genocide.

Justifying Genocide

US soldiers pose over a mass grave with some 300 bodies of innocent Native American Lakota Sioux, two-thirds women and children, massacred at Wounded Knee, Pine Ridge Reservation in 1891.

One of the few survivors of the massacre was a baby girl, found 4 days after the massacre, lying beneath her mothers dead frozen body, her mother having protected her in death as she had in life. The baby girl having survived the massacre and blizzard with temperatures 40 below zero, was then abducted by US Brigadier General Colby as a trophy of the massacre, in his own words “a most interesting Indian relic”.

Every single state in the United States had in place a scalp bounty law that would stipulate the fee the state would pay for the murder of an Indian, any Indian — it didn’t matter, it was a clear policy of genocide. The payment scale was graduated with the murder of an adult male Indian achieving the highest reward, but even murdering a baby Indian would secure a good reward.

Between Columbus’s arrival in 1492 and the massacre at wounded knee in 1891, 98% of the Indigenous population had been wiped out and 97.5% of their land had been stolen.

In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haartez in 2004, Benny Morris justifies this crime against humanity saying that “the great American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians. There are cases in which the overall, final good justifies harsh and cruel acts that are committed in the course of history.”

Whitewashing Ethnic Cleansing

Unlike some Zionists, Benny Morris doesn’t deny Israel’s crimes of ethnic cleansing, rape, and murder of Palestinian people in 1948 to facilitate the founding of the Jewish state, rather he justifies the countless massacres, rape and the forced expulsion of over 750,000 Palestinians from their homes, the destruction of over 500 Palestinian towns and villages, resulting today in more than 7 million Palestinian refugees.

He justifies it as a means to an end, he says, “Under some circumstances expulsion is not a war crime. I don’t think that the expulsions of 1948 were war crimes. You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. You have to dirty your hands.”¹

On 9th April 1948 soldiers of the Irgun, a Zionist terror group, commanded by Menachem Begin, entered the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin. They slaughtered 250-300 men, women and children in cold blood. Their bodies were purposely mutilated to terrorise other Palestinians into fleeing their homes before they suffered similar massacres.
The Irgun, having proved itself, became part of the Israeli army. And its leader Menachem Begin went on to become the Prime Minister of Israel.

“peanuts” — Benny Morris’s description of massacres like Deir Yassin

Benny Morris describes such massacres as “peanuts” and “chicken feed” insisting that when compared to other massacres in history “we behaved very well.”

In fact he says Ben Gurion didn’t go far enough:

I think he made a serious historical mistake in 1948… he got cold feet… if he was already engaged in expulsion, maybe he should have done a complete job… my feeling is that this place would be quieter and know less suffering if the matter had been resolved once and for all. If Ben Gurion had carried out a large expulsion and cleansed the whole country — the whole land of Israel, as far as the Jordan River.

To this day the relentless quest to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from the land between the River Jordan and the Sea is still going on. Only now it is less ‘noticeable’ to the outside world, with coded terms such as ‘transfer’ and creating of ‘security zones’ being used to mean ethnic cleansing.

But this isn’t enough for Benny Morris, he proposes that in the future Arab citizens of Israel will also need to be ethnically cleansed because they have more children than Jewish citizens and their numbers will become an existential threat to the Jewish state. He says,

acts of expulsion will be entirely reasonable. They may even be essential. The Israeli Arabs are a time bomb… emissary of the enemy that is amongst us… a potential fifth column. In both demographic and security terms they are liable to undermine the state. So that if Israel again finds itself in a situation of existential threat, as in 1948, it may be forced to act as it did then.

Racism

Benny Morris compares the Palestinians to wild animals that need to be caged, he says, “Something like a cage has to be built for them. I know that sounds terrible. It is really cruel. But there is no choice. There is a wild animal there that has to be locked up in one way or another.”

In February 2010 the Cambridge University Israel Society cancelled Benny Morris’s scheduled talk and issued a statement saying that they “apologise for any unintended offence.. We want to clarify that the intention of the Israel Society was never to give racism a platform”

The LSE’s Shame

But it seems unlike Cambridge, the London School of Economics, shamefully are happy to invite and give centre stage to a racist. And what’s more the LSE awarded those attending the talk with credits that count towards the CDP Continuing Professional Development Certification which is a requirement of Government, professional and trade institutions. Apparently they see attendance of Benny Morris’s talk as a way of fulfilling your professional requirements of updating your skills and knowledge.

The security arrangements were unprecedented for what was after all a public lecture by a historian promoting his book. Attendees had to pre-register days in advance of the event, providing personal details including their address and then if they qualified for a ticket, on the day they had to bring a photo id like a passport or driving licence before they would be allowed in. The actual venue for the event was kept secret until 24 hours beforehand. Bags were strictly banned, and handbags and coats were searched before entry.

Activists had made the decision before hand that they would allow Benny Morris to speak uninterrupted. There was a silent protest inside the hall with people walking out with stickers over their mouths reading “Morris is a racist”.
Many people who were not part of any protest also just walked out, they had had enough of Morris’s opinions presented as history.

Security paranoia continued to the end of the talk when the audience were kept kettled inside the hall whilst Benny Morris was escorted out of the hall and out of the LSE.

In Benny Morris’s own words: “I was ushered by the security team down an elevator and through a narrow basement passage full of kitchen stores and out a side entrance.”

These ridiculous security arrangements can only be interpreted as indicative of the unpopularity of LSE’s decision to bend to Zionist pressure and promote hate speech on campus.

It seems Benny Morris has a neurosis when it comes to Muslims, he has said for Muslims “human life doesn’t have the same value as it does in the West” and sees Muslims living in the West as “creating a dangerous internal threat.”

His racism and islamophobia distorts his perception of everyday reality. He sees ‘Muslims under the bed’ everywhere. For example he describes his encounter outside the LSE as a “mob of some dozen Muslims, Arabs and their supporters.. surrounded me.. raucously harangued and bated me… Several spoke in broken, obviously newly acquired, English. Violence was thick in the air… Passersby looked on in astonishment, and perhaps shame, but it seemed the sight of angry bearded, caftaned Muslims was sufficient to deter any intervention. To me, it felt like Brownshirts in a street scene in 1920s Berlin… Uncurbed, Muslim intimidation in the public domain of people they see as disagreeing with them is palpable and palpably affecting the British Christian majority among whom they live, indeed, cowing them into silence. One senses real fear…”

As the video evidence shows, this is a total figment of his imagination, unfortunately such fabrications are not restricted to his personal encounters and cloud his whole work as a historian.

Is that really what happened?

A week after the encounter with human rights activists outside the LSE Benny Morris wrote an article for The National Interest (20 June 2011) in which he described what happened in the following words:

“mob of some dozen Muslims, Arabs and their supporters.. surrounded me..”

What mob? Do you see a dozen Muslims? Do you see any dozen people?
“raucously harangued and bated me..”

Watch the video, they were talking to you. At one stage you even asked them a question “Have you read my books?” to which they replied “Yes, we have…”

the two women on the left are part of Benny Morris’s entourage, the two men on the right are human rights activists

“Several spoke in broken, obviously newly acquired, English.”

Broken English? Not that it matters, but watch the video you will hear the activists spoke in clear English.

“Violence was thick in the air..

Ridiculous, it would be funny if it were not for the fact that the purpose of such inflammatory statements is to incite islamophobia. The activists can clearly be heard saying “this is what free speech is about; we are going to let you have your platform and you’ll be able to talk without being interrupted but right now it would be nice to have a couple of answers…” — hardly the words of someone contemplating violence.

“Passersby looked on in astonishment, and perhaps shame, but it seemed the sight of angry bearded, caftaned Muslims was sufficient to deter any intervention. To me, it felt like Brownshirts in a street scene in 1920s Berlin..”

Passersby took our leaflets explaining who you were, and yes they were astonished, astonished that a professor could get away with saying such racist things. What ‘angry, caftaned Muslims’? Do you see any, or is that also a figment of your imagination, a part of your racism?

“Uncurbed, Muslim intimidation in the public domain of people they see as disagreeing with them is palpable and palpably affecting the British Christian majority among whom they live, indeed, cowing them into silence. One senses real fear…”

Yes you are afraid, your fear is that the British public have woken up to Israels crimes and are no longer prepared to give Israel a free pass on account of the Holocaust. You fear that the activists were mainly not Muslims but were of all faiths and none, all united against your racism and against Israels racism.

Watch the video [below] or see the stills above and decide for yourself if there is a shred of truth in Benny Morris’s account of what happened.

In the ‘best’ Zionist tradition, others like Melanie Phillips have continued, where Morris stopped, in adding their own embellishments to the story in their own reporting of the encounter which they never witnessed. Melanie Phillips writes for the Daily Mail newspaper and is a regular panelist on BBC’s Question Time (BBC One) and The Moral Maze (BBC Radio 4), her shoddy journalism is clearly a reflection on the publications and on the programmes that pay her to spout her lies.

Its strange that Benny Morris should mention the Brownshirts of 1920s Berlin, and yet at the same time be oblivious to the parallels between his justification of ethnically cleansing the Palestinians to make way for his ‘Jewish state,’ his racially pure Jewish State and the Nazis justification of cleansing Germany of the Jews in order to make way for their racially pure Aryan state.

1. Haaretz Magazine, January 8, 2004.